By Bruce Karnick

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The swim and dive competitive season begin with the Metro East Conference Relay meet. All the schools in the conference get together and race in a set of relays, many of which do not appear in the normal dual meets or the state meet. This year’s meet was held Thursday, Aug. 25 at The Grove in Inver Grove Heights.

The first race is the 400yard medley relay. It features four different swimmers swimming four lengths of the pool with each swimmer performing only one stroke the entire race. The order of strokes is backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle. During the regular dual meets, this is a 200yard medley relay, same strokes, same order, but only two lengths of the pool.

The Hastings team of Annika Ries, Ava McNamara, Josey Larson and Izzy Green took first place with a time of 4:17.11. Simley grabbed second with a time of 4:30.87.

Race two is the normal 200yard freestyle relay. Hastings took second to Mahtomedi by 1.42 seconds with a time of 1:45.17. The four swimmers that took part were Ashtyn Stewart, Lauren Jenkins, Lila Salzman and Kira Aarness.

Race three is the 400yard relay individual medley relay. It is the same four strokes as the first race, but the order of swimming it is different. Butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, freestyle, and each swimmer does all four strokes for one length of the pool. The Hastings team of Sofia Kovalenko, Chloe Aarness, Emma Dehmlow and Josey Larson took first with a time of 4:36.64 beating Mahtomedi by almost two seconds.

Diving is typically the middle of the meet and Hastings squeaked past Hill Murry 186.2 – 183.6 for first place.

The fifth race had Hastings continuing their dominance. The 200yard butterfly team of Lauren Jenkins, Chloe Aarness, Sofia Kovalenko and Josey Larson took first by four seconds over Mahtomedi with a time of 1:56.75 The sixth race is the long one, the 850yard freestyle relay. Hastings outlasted Two Rivers beating them by a full nine seconds with a time of 9:18.33. Emma Dehmlow, Lila Salzman, Kira Aarness and Izzy Green went the distance to win that race.

Race seven, the 200yard backstroke went to Mahtomedi. The Hastings team, made up of Annika Ries, Lila Salzman, Elianna HerreraCarlson and Ella Matson was a full eight seconds behind the Zephyrs with a time of 2:08.87.

Race eight had Hastings back on top. The team of Sofia Kovalenko, Lauren Jenkins, Emma Dehmlow and Ava McNamara took first in the 200yard breaststroke with a time of 2:21.02, 4.48 seconds faster than second place Mahtomedi.

The final race, the 400yard freestyle, is a normal dual meet race and it is often one of the most exciting. Ava McNamara gave the Raiders a twosecond lead after her leg of the relay. Kira Aarness extended that lead by 1.67 seconds. Heading into the third leg of the relay, Hastings had a 3.67 second lead. Izzy Green swam a strong third leg of the relay with a 58.84, but Mahtomedi was just a little faster, cutting the Raider lead down to 3.28 seconds. It came down to the fourth and final swimmer of the relay, Ashtyn Stewart. Stewart is a fast 100 freestyle swimmer, but again, the Zephyr’s were faster. This time, it looked like they had a wringer lined up. Stewart came in at 56.34 and Abigail Wright of Mahtomedi finished with a 53.78 but she was not able to make up enough time to grab the first place finish from Hastings.

Hastings won the meet with a score of 154, followed by Mahtomedi (122), Two Rivers, HillMurray, Simley, Tartan, South St. Pual and North.

The Raider coaches pick a swimmer and diver of the meet after each meet. Seventh grader Emma Dehmlow earned swimmer of the meet by swimming personal bests in all three of her races, including cutting half a second in her 50 freestyle. Diver of the meet was Mari Hall. Hall earned the recognition not for her performance on the board, but for her great sportsmanship. A diver on an opposing team failed a dive and Hall was the first one to step up and show her support.

Hastings will travel to Two Rivers for a 6 p.m. start time on September 1. Then have a week off until they host Tartan on September 8 at 6 p.m.

Sophomore Josey Larson had a great time in the 100-yard fly leg of the 400-medley relay. Photo by Bruce Karnick