Kentlands Kingfish Phoebe Clark comes up for air in the girls’ 11-12 50-meter breaststroke.
What happens when a devastating summer storm wreaks havoc on Montgomery County on a Friday night? Saturday morning, nearly all MCSL swim teams faced power outages at pools and rescheduling meets in an already tight swim season. Our local teams fared better than many others throughout the region.
Washingtonian Woods had already rescheduled its June 30 meet against Parkland to the previous Thursday. The Waves extended their roll through Division O with two more wins in as many weeks. On June 23 they faced Middlebridge and won, 428-309.
Swimmers Lily Spivey and Amanda Murayama led the charge and have both earned spots on the county’s All-Star rankings. Spivey is ranked in freestyle, backstroke and IM for the 13-14 girls’ group while Murayama earned a spot for her breaststroke in the 11-12 girls’.
Parkland experienced this swimming prowess first-hand as they fell to Spivey and the Waves 427 – 267 on June 28.
The Kentlands has had a tough start to the season — in weeks two and three they dropped their meets against both Country Glen and Hallowell. The Hallowell contest was one of only two MCSL meets completed on June 30.
According to Team rep Tami Hennemen, “Kentlands has been taking the hits, but that is not getting the team down.”
Olivia French continues to provide bright spots with solid placement atop the MCSL rankings. French is ranked first in the 11-12 age group in freestyle, backstroke and butterfly, and she holds the number four spot in IM.
Lakelands Lionfish swimmers get ready to march in for their meet against Glenwood.
Though the Saturday meet was cancelled due to a power outage at the pool, the Lakelands Lionfish hosted Glenwood on Sunday, July 1 and eeked out a win.
Coach Brooke Hoffman said, “I issued the challenge to my kids and they did it! We had a lot of swimmers out because of the reschedule so a ton of kids had to swim up or swim more events than they normally do. I decided to realign both relays and try for a one-two sweep, and it worked. It was the difference in the meet!”
The win showed the team’s resiliency after a close loss to King Farm the week before. Although the Lionfish posted eight swimmers with All-Star times, the Screaming Geese edged them out in the end on June 23.
At press time, the Diamond Farm Stingrays had not yet scheduled a make-up for the June 30 meet, but the team hosted its first-ever USA Swimming Swim-A-Thon on July 1 at Quince Orchard Park. Over 40 swimmers participated — pre-teamers through the 15-18 age group.
Head Coach Chris Franklin and Assistant Coach Holly Chiswell showed their Stingray spirit and swam with the kids. There were two sessions in which swimmers had to complete a two-hour swim or a maximum of 200 lengths.
Team rep Carole Valis said, “Many of the upper age group kids completed the 200 lengths, and lots of the younger age group kids successfully swam 100 lengths of the pool. The determination was exciting to see.”
The Stingrays won their meet on the June 23 by a margin of 405.5 to 373.5 against Twin Farms.