Monday, August 01, 2011

SPORTS >> Sherwood dominates CASL MOC swim meet

By Ray Benton
Leader sports editor




The Sherwood Sharks made it nine seasons in a row without a loss in the Central Arkansas Swim League, and also brought home top team awards in the 2011 Meet of Champions last Saturday at UALR.

Not only did Sherwood win team awards, the team also brought down several MOC records.

The Sharks won nearly every relay in the morning session, which included all qualifying league swimmers 10 and under. They broke league records in three of them.

The boys 6-under team of Jake Hale, Maddux Bowen, James Cureton and Michael Potts smashed by seven seconds the old record of 1:50.18 in the freestyle relay.

Vincent Jaworski, Nicholas Heye, Tristen Bowen and Joseph Potts broke the record in the boys 10-under freestyle relay, finishing in 1:01.43, beating the old record by less than a second.

The girls 8-under freestyle relay team of Maycee Broadway, Olivia Tipton, Isabelle Sexson and Alyssa Riley finished in 1:13.72, beating the old record by just over a second.

Even more records were taken down by Sherwood swimmers later that afternoon when everyone else under 18 competed.

Josh Hale, Brendan Daugherty, Ian Heye and Thomas Heye won the 12-under freestyle relay with a record-breaking 54.38.

Erin Woodward, Camryn Jenkins, Elizabeth Franks and Delaney Haralson turned in a record-breaking 56.92 in the girls 12-under free relay.

In the boys 18-under relay, Quanderrius Doss, Devin Scott, Austin Clay and Will Axsom finished in 45.69, which was good enough to beat the old record, but still only good enough for third place, as the Otter Creek and Bryant teams also broke the record with even faster times.

12-year old Delaney Haralson was the meet’s top overall performer. She won four of the five individual events and took second in the fifth, and she broke the league records, which she herself already held, in all four wins.

She beat the old record in the individual medley race by 1.40 seconds with a 1:07.89 finish. Her butterly time of 31.50 beat her own old record by two-tenths of a second. She beat her backstroke record by .16 by finishing in 31.64. She also beat the freestyle record of 28.30 with a Saturday finish of 27.69.

Her closest competitor throughout the meet, Kayla McGee of Lonoke, also beat her old record, but couldn’t beat her new one, taking second place at 28.10. McGee won the breaststroke to stave off a Haralson sweep.

On the boys side, Thomas Heye won three individual events and broke records in two of them. In each case, he also broke his own records. He shaved .73 seconds off the record in the breaststroke, finishing in 34.91, and cut over two-and-a-half seconds off the individual-medley record he set last year, finishing in 1:05.21. He also took first place in the freestyle, and finished second in the backstroke and butterfly.

12-year old Erin Woodward also performed well, earning the team several points by getting two second and three third-place finishes, and competing very closely with Haralson and McGee. Together, the threesome dominated the gold level in every event.

10-year-old Anna Jaworski and six-year-old Michael Potts won four events each in the gold level. Nine-year old Joseph Potts won three events in the 10-under category.

Other Sherwood gold-level winners included Will Axsom, who won the 18-under freestyle, Maycee Broadway won the 8-under girls freestyle, Cross Engel took first in the girls 10-under backstroke, Nicholas Heye won the boys 10-under breaststroke and Michael Sexson won the boys 8-under butterfly.

Sherwood’s Mike Hathaway, Philip Stanely, Kaiden Wilson and Michael Sexson won the boys 8-under freestyle relay, while Cross Engel, Brianna Hanley, Kayla White and Anna Jaworski won the girls 10-under freestyle relay.

The Sharks had an extremely long list of swimmers score points in every race and category, turning in one of the most collectively productive meets ever for the already very accomplished team.