The Saline Reporter
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Huge day for Hornets
Runner-up Saline wins two relays and qualifies the third at SEC meet
By Jerry Hinnen, Staff Writer
PUBLISHED: March 1, 2007
The Saline boys' swimming and diving team entered last weekend's Southeastern Conference meet knowing it was their last chance to make state meet qualification times and prove that they could contend for a top-10 finish at state.
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Consider those goals more than met.
The Hornets won two of the meet's three relays, qualified the other for state, made other individual cuts, and totaled 438 points, finishing second at the meet only to state power Ann Arbor Pioneer.
"I'd been holding my breath for two weeks," said first-year head coach Derek Samuelson. "But I knew on our first swim, the 200 medley relay, that we had come to swim. It's hard to pick out one performance. They were all outstanding."
That 200-yard medley relay team of Justin Duong, Connor Christie, Noah Whitener and Alex Wu set the tone for Saline's meet by swimming a pool-record 1:38.67, which was good for first place by .36 over the Pioneer relay.
From there, it was one success after another for the Hornets. Christie cut more than two seconds off his preliminary time to finish in 2:01.84, which was good for second.
Hornets captured two of the top four slots in the 50 freestyle as Whitener (22.09) and Wu (23.00) finished first and fourth. In the 100 butterfly, Whitener finished runner-up by less than three-tenths of a second with time of 51.56, while Nick Schneider's eighth-place 57.68 also claimed points for Saline.
"We swam really well today," Whitener said. "It was good to come out and show everybody what we're capable of before the state meet. If we can swim like this without much of a taper, we should have a really, really good state meet."
The swimmers could be joined at state by as many as three Hornet divers. Saline sophomore Joel Chambers set a pool record with a score of 417 to win the competition and will dive at state for the second consecutive year.
Senior Andrew Devries (332.55) and freshman Hank Remenapp (301.95) took second and fourth, and will be in contention to join Chambers, depending on regional results March 6.
In the 100 freestyle, Drew Dakin and Daniel Kung took seventh and eighth in 51.70 and 52.31, respectively. Freshman Michael Hughes was Saline's top finisher in the 500 freestyle, finishing eighth in 5:12.19.
The Hornets then got back on the winner's podium in the 200 freestyle relay, with the same foursome that took first in the medley relay coming out on top again, pulling away from Pioneer to win in 1:29.30.
Duong (56.59) took fifth in the 100 backstroke and Schneider (58.81) seventh. The Hornets then went on to take three of the top eight spots in the 100 breaststroke with Christie (1:01.80), junior Matt Defauw (1:06.35) and sophomore Travis Littlejohn (1:06.54) finishing second, sixth and seventh, respectively.
Saline then capped the meet by finally making the state cut in the 400 freestyle relay, with Wu, Schneider, Dakin and Duong combining to swim 3:22.84. The time was only good for third place, but Samuelson admitted he barely cared.
"I wasn't worried about the scores," he said, noting that one of the highlights of the weekend occurred in the preliminary swims, when Schneider swam 57.44 to qualify for the state meet.
"He hit his taper well, and cut two seconds off his best time," Samuelson said. "But I couldn't be more proud of all of them. It's a perfect ending to what has been a great season and I'm really happy for them."
Samuelson is hoping for a top-10 finish at state, a goal that Christie said after the success of the SEC meet was more than attainable.
"We're looking for top five in two of our relays," he said. "We should be able to go a little faster than today, get our time to drop and hopefully we'll be right up there in the top places."
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