By Bruce Karnick

September 3rd the Hastings Girls Swim team had their first meet of the season and played host to the Tartan Titans. Because of the no fan rule for indoor events, Hastings Community Television broadcast the meet on Facebook Live and recorded it for a later replay on both HCTV 14 and 799HD for Comcast Subscribers and the HCTV YouTube channel for the rest of the world.

Hastings won 11 of the 12 varsity events and the final score was Hastings 102, Tartan 76. After the win, Head Coach Katie McAlpin had this to say. “The meet went really well. Everyone followed the COVID rules that have been put in place. Some of them are really different but we are excited that we get to have a season. Even if it is only part of a season.”

Up next, the Raiders will host South St Paul on Tuesday, Sep 8. This one is against a conference team but does not count towards conference standings. Coach McAlpin explained, “Since we are only able to swim against teams in our conference, we have three meets that were added in that will not count for conference standings. We are looking forward to mixing it up.”

On Thursday the Raiders travel to Simley for a Conference meet, and this one counts. “This will be one of our harder meets of the season.” McAlpin stated.

The Hastings coaches have a tradition for every meet. They choose a swimmer of the meet and a diver of the meet.

This week, the swimmer of the meet was Sunshyne Lewis (Junior). Sunshyne had three lifetime best swims and took third by less than a second in the JV 100 Breaststroke.

This week, the diver of the meet was Annika Tverberg (Senior Captain). With a score of 236.05 she took down the school and pool record in the 6-dive event. She was only 8.5 points from the MEC Conference record.

Freshman Lauren Jenkins wins the 200 individual medley with a time of 2:21.46.The IM includes four different strokes the Butterfly, Backstroke, Breaststroke and Freestyle. Each stroke in the 200 is one full, 50 yard lap in the pool. Photo by Bruce Karnick