Swim and Dive: Girls Win Home Meet
By Alan Parish - FF/S
After three away meets to open the season, the Darlington swim and dive teams hosted Woodland and Cass last night in the Huffman Center. The girls’ team won the meet and the boys’ team finished second.
The girls’ relay teams had dominating performances, winning two of the three relay events. The girls’ 200-yard medley relay team (Lauren Chin, Anna Grace Rutledge, Kristi Hicks and Emily Thurmond) placed first with a time of 2:10.97. The girls’ 200-yard freestyle relay team (Rutledge, Hicks, Thurmond and Melissa Picon) also won in resounding fashion, with a time of 1:54.39. They knocked a few tenths of a second off their season-best as they inch closer to the State-qualifying time of 1:54.00.
There were many first-place individual performances for the girls: Picon in the 200-yard and 500-yard freestyle events, Hicks in the 50-yard freestyle, Thurmond in the 100-yard butterfly and Chin in the100-yard freestyle. Other top-three performances included Mary Morgan Yancey in the 200-yard freestyle (3rd) and 500-yard freestyle (3rd), Thurmond in the 50-yard freestyle (2nd)0, Suzannah Peek in the 100-yard freestyle (3rd) and the girls’ 400-yard freestyle relay team (3rd).
The boys’ team was led by Dillon Weeks, who placed first in the 100-yard freestyle and 3rd in the 100-yard backstroke. Alex Cox also had a great night as he placed 2nd in the 50-yard freestyle with a personal record of 26.28. Teammate Wil Taylor wasn’t far behind, with a 26.56 3rd-place finish. Those three boys combined with Jesse Cook to place 3rd in the 200-yard freestyle relay. Other third place finishes for the boys were Cook in the 200-yard freestyle and Trammell Braden in the 100-yard breaststroke.
Darlington dominated the 1-meter diving events, with Cox winning the boys’ and Hicks winning for the girls. Taylor placed 2nd in boys’ diving.
