Daily Reporter staff reports
NEW PALESTINE — The Greenfield-Central boys swimmers are in a good position heading into Saturday’s sectional swimming and diving finals at New Palestine.
The Cougars, who won their ninth straight Hoosier Heritage Conference title in January, continued their dominance on Thursday, winning nine of the 11 events in the sectional preliminaries and finishing second in the other two.
Three different Greenfield-Central swimmers won two individual events each. Samuel Logan won the 100 yard butterfly and 100 yard backstroke for the Cougars. Travis Black won the 50 and 100 yard freestyle. Samuel Jennings won the 200 and 500 yard freestyle.
In the 200 yard freestyle, county swimmers made up six of the eight qualifiers. The Cougars finished in first and seventh. Mt. Vernon’s Cole Worley was second and Eastern Hancock’s Garrett Henderson finished third.
Richmond’s Ben Quinn won the 200 yard IM, and county swimmers claimed every other spot in the finals. Greenfield-Central’s Anthony Nagel was second and Mt. Vernon’s Aiden Tierney finished third.
Behind Black in the 50 free was teammate Michael Joven in third. In the 100 free, Mt. Vernon’s Logan Shomaker finished third behind Black and Richmond’s Dustin Wilson.
County swimmers finished in the top three spots in the 100 yard butterfly, with Greenfield-Central’s Logan first and Jackson Pechin third, with Mt. Vernon’s Joe Shepard second.
In the 500 free, Jennings won with the Royals’ Henderson third.
Following Logan in the 100 backstroke were Mt. Vernon’s Kaylen Morgan and Eli Thomas in second and third, respectively.
Two Cougars finished in the top three in the 100 yard breastroke, with Andrew Noah from Greenfield-Central picking up the win and Nagel finishing third.
In the relays, Greenfield-Central won the 200 yard medley by nearly six seconds to runner-up Richmond. New Palestine finished third, and Eastern Hancock and Mt. Vernon both advanced to Saturday’s finals with a fifth- and seventh-place finish, respectively.
The Cougars also won the 400 yard freestyle relay, with a seven-second gap between them and Richmond. Eastern Hancock finished third, Mt. Vernon was fourth and New Palestine qualified for the finals with an eighth-place finish.
The 200 yard freestyle relay was one of the two events the Cougars didn’t win, as they finished less than a second behind Connersville. Also qualifying for the finals were New Palestine in fourth, Eastern Hancock in seventh and Mt. Vernon in eighth.
The sectional finals are Saturday at New Palestine. Diving preliminaries will start at 9 a.m., with swimming and diving finals beginning at 1 p.m.
