The Dickinson swim and dive team competed in a multi team dual in Bismarck at the Capital City Random Draw meet on Friday, Sept 1. The meet consisted of six teams who all faced off against each other. Dickinson went 4-1 with their only loss coming against Bismarck Century who went 5-0 and is the five-time defending state champion.
“The meet format for this meet was a little different than our typical order of events for our high school swim and dive meets,” Dickinson head coach Jenna Wolf said. “There was some suspense to this meet of not knowing when your event would be. The relays stayed in their same spots, but for individual events we drew from a bucket for the order of events. It made it interesting as typically the swimmers in the breaststroke event always have to wait for the last individual event, but not today, that ended up being the first individual event after the 200 medley relay. We did have some swimmers step up in the breaststroke event with 3 swimmers in the top ten, Aryana Twist, Ericka Williams and Savanna Baranko.”
Mara Ellerkamp was the only winner of an event win this week as she came home with first place in the 500 freestyle where she shed four seconds off her time from their last meet in Williston.
Kara Wanner came in seventh with a state qualifying time, and Hannah Meschke squeaked out a tenth place finish.
Charley Rathgeber swam well for Dickinson as she added two more state qualifying events finishing second in the 50 freestyle just .11 seconds out from first place, and she placed third in the 100 yard backstroke.
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Hailey Rathgeber tied for fourth place in the 50 free, and then Averie Wax came in tenth place. Hailey also finished in third place in the 100 freestyle.
Taylor Miller qualified for state by coming in sixth in the 100 butterfly and she also came in sixth in the 100 freestyle.
“Over on the diving boards, Jaydin Decker dove her way to a second place finish,” Wolf said. “Kenzie Swisher competed the 11 dive competition for the first time as this is her first season of diving and she achieved a state meet consideration score by earning over 250 points. She finished ninth overall.”
The 200 and 400 freestyle relay teams made up of the two Rathgeber’s, Ellerkamp and Wanner came in second and third place.
“All of these girls have been continuing to work hard every day at practice and the final scores show the depth we continue to bring to the table at just the second meet of our season,” said Wolf.
