Mt. Vernon’s Brady Gray wins the 100 Butterfly against Greenfield-Central.
Mike Brown | For The Daily Reporter
By Brady Extin | Daily Reporter
FORTVILLE — The Mt. Vernon and Greenfield-Central boys and girls swimming and diving teams split wins Monday night at Mt. Vernon Middle School.
Both the Mt. Vernon boys and Greenfield-Central girls came away with decisive victories.
The Marauder boys defeated the Cougars 98-87, and the G-C girls won by a score of 125-61.
“We’re at a really great spot right now. We’re swimming fast, and getting our hands on the wall when we need to,” Mt. Vernon head coach Brad Grieshop said. “We’re just doing a really good job at racing and getting ourselves prepped and ready for the (Hoosier Heritage Conference) meet in four weeks and (New Palestine) Sectional at the end of the year.”
The Greenfield-Central girls used the night to race in events they aren’t typically accustomed to night-in and night-out, but that still wasn’t enough to slow them down.
“I think the girls are coming along and starting to look really good,” Greenfield-Central girls head coach Emily Logan said. “Tonight we kind of let them pick some different events than they normally swim, so they could enjoy some times in other events and have some different competition with each other, so that was good to see.”
Greenfield-Central still enjoyed 10 first-place finishes out of the 12 events.
Rachel Stutz, Norah Johnson, Mary Ellen Stratman and Reagan Crouch got things started with a time of 1:56.25 and first-place finish in the 200-yard medley relay.
All four would go on to have big nights.
Johnson added individual wins in the 200 freestyle, and the 100 backstroke, along with another relay win in the 400-yard freestyle.
Stutz won individually in the 50 freestyle, and was also a part of the 400 freestyle relay.
Stratman joined those two on the 400 freestyle relay, and Crouch was a part of the winning 200 freestyle team.
Other first-place finishers for the Cougars included Cecelia Duffy-Johnson, Taylor Parsons, and Sonja Jahrsdoerfer.
“They look really good right now. They are working hard, and they are all on that same positive mindset going forward,” Logan said. “They have big goals as individuals and they continue to push each other all along the way to get there, so this is a pretty fun and exciting team to be with right now.”
Mt. Vernon’s lone swimming win came in the 100 freestyle when Anna Hiner beat out Stratman in a neck-and-neck race, 57.49 seconds to 57.54.
Riley Nielsen grabbed their other first-place finish in 1-meter diving with a score of 193.20.
“We raced really well on the girls side tonight too. It’s always nice to race Greenfield to give us that little extra competition that we need. Hopefully it encourages the girls, and I really think it did tonight,” Grieshop said. “It gives them some goals, but we’re in a great spot on the girls’ side right now. We have a great senior class, but a lot of underclassmen, so just seeing where they fit in is the big piece of the puzzle right now, but we’re loving these fast times we keep seeing.”
Similarly to the Greenfield-Central girls, the Mt. Vernon boys grabbed first-place in the opening event and never looked back.
Adison Mayes, Eli Webster, Xander Allen and Brady Youngs outpaced G-C by just over a second to win the 200 medley relay.
Webster would go on to grab two individual wins in the 200 individual medley and the 100 backstroke, along with another relay win in the 400 freestyle, and Mayes took first in the 100 breaststroke.
Joining Webster with two individual wins were both Brady Gray and Ethan Murphy. Gray won the 100 butterfly and 50 freestyle, and Murphy took first in both the 100 and 200 freestyle.
The two G-C wins came in the 1-meter diving and 500-yard freestyle.
Alex Jahrsdoerfer’s score of 195.15 earned him first in 1-meter diving, and in the freestyle, Jaeden Peters outpaced the field by 14 seconds.
Both teams are off until after the new year. The Marauders return to the pool on Jan. 2 at home against Connersville, and the Cougars face off against Greenwood at home on Jan. 3.
