The Harvester swim team competed at the Region 1-4A Championship swim meet this past weekend. Here’s highlights of the competition.
Friday, January 30th at 12:10 pm the preliminary round of the swim competition began. Region 1 was represented by 21 girls teams and 15 boys teams qualifying from their district meets. Here’s how our Harvester’s performed during the preliminaries.
The girls started off with the 200-medley relay which was seeded seventh overall. Aria Taylor, Zayannah Baker, Madilyn Paul, and Emery Lowenstein swam within two seconds of their personal best and maintained their seventh place position. The 200 Freestyle relay was able to move up from their 12th place seed into ninth place. That relay was made with Emery Lowenstein, Aria Taylor, Zayannah Baker, and Madilyn Paul. To finish the prelims, the girls were seeded eighth and finished in eighth place in the 400-yard freestyle relay. The 400-yard freestyle relay was made with Zayannah Baker, Aria Taylor, Madilyn Paul, and Emery Lowenstein.
The boys started off with the 200-medley relay and were able to drop over 20 seconds crushing their district qualifying time. This would have moved them up to 10th from the 11th place seeding, however, the officials saw an early takeoff and disqualified their relay from competing in the finals on Saturday. Their impressive drop in time was thanks to Orion Taylor, Archer Schroeder, Emmett Flood, and Juaquin Chavez Badillo swimming their best.
The Freestyle Relays fared better. The 200 freestyle relay moved up from 11th place seeding to 10th place. That relay was composed of Orion Taylor, Juan Mendoza, Emmett Flood, and Juaquin Chavez Badillo. The 400-yard freestyle relay was able to move into seventh place from a ninth place seeding. That relay was made with Orion Taylor, Juaquin Chavez Badillo, Emmett Flood, and Archer Schroeder.
Archer Schroeder was the only swimmer to qualify in Individual events from the district. He was seeded sixth in the 50-yard freestyle and moved up to fourth place with a new personal best. He was seeded eighth on the 100-yard butterfly and his time would have kept him in eighth, however, he missed the wall with one hand and was disqualified from swimming butterfly in the championship finals.
Going into finals, the girls had the 200-medley relay and 400-yard freestyle relay with a chance to go to the state meet. While the boys had the 400-yard freestyle relay and Archer had the 50-yard freestyle holding on to a chance to compete in San Antonio. The top two from each race would automatically advance to the state championship meet and then placed third – eighth would be reseeded from ALL four regions and the next 8 fastest times would advance.
During finals, the girls were able to improve the 200-medley relay from seventh place to sixth place and keep their state hopes alive. The same girls remained on the-medley from prelims. Their 200 freestyle relay had one substitution. Faith Robles was put in to help keep another swimmer fresh for the 400 relay. The girls finished 11th on the relay and earned crucial points for the team. To finish the day for the girls, their 400 freestyle relay finished in eighth. The relay had all the same girls from the previous day. Overall the girls team took ninth place in points.
The boys had a better day in finals than prelims. Their 200 freestyle relay finished 10th with the same swimmers from prelims. The 400-yard freestyle finished seventh improving on their time and position with the same swimmers from day one. Archer Schroeder was able to maintain his fourth place in the 50-yard freestyle and keep his state hopes alive. The boys finished the day in 11th place by points.
Early in the morning on Sunday, UIL posted all the callups for each race. The swimmers who were third – eighth place got to see if their times were fast enough to qualify for state. At 5 A.M., UIL had the list posted online and Archer Schroeder had qualified in one of the wild card slots. He will swim in the 50-yard freestyle at the State Championship meet in San Antonio in two weeks. The relays that were eligible for did not have fast enough times this year.
The 4A State Championship Swim meet will be held at the Josh Davis Natatorium with prelims on February 12th and finals on February 13th. Archer Schroeder will represent Pampa this year at the State Championship this year. John Lee will have a more in depth article and interview with Schroeder later this week.
