The high school swimming season jumps out of the gate with a bang holding one of the bigger meets of the season to kick things off. The conference relay meet is meet number one on the calendar and it features the entire conference descending on The Grove pool in Inver Grove Heights. 

Hastings started the meet with a win in the 400-yard medley relay and second in the 200-yard freestyle. The third event was the 400-yard individual medley relay in which Hastings dominated with an almost six second win. 

Event four is diving and it is going to be tough to defeat the Two Rivers Warriors very talented diving group this season. Hastings placed fourth for diving. A tenth place finish in the 200-yard butterfly relay dropped the team score a little but a strong second place finish in the 850-yard freestyle relay bumped the team score right back up. 

The 200-yard breaststroke relay finished third and the 400-yard freestyle relay finished first, 13 seconds ahead of the closest competition, which is nearly one length of the pool. 

Overall, Mahtomedi won the team event with a score of 130, Hastings finished second with 120 and Two Rivers finished third with 118. 

Head Coach Katie McAlpin is very pleased with the way the season has started for the Raiders.  

“We had a fun week last week. Had some great dryland workouts, challenging pool sets, and our first meet! We have such a fantastic group of girls this year. I am excited to see what the season will bring,” she said. 

Coach McAlpin does a great job encouraging her student athletes with different accolades each week. 

Leader of the week: Clara Birken – “Clara showed great leadership this week. She was encouraging and guiding the new kids at Conference Relays. She has shown determination through the dryland workouts as well,” McAlpin said.  

“The first meet of the season was Conference Relays. This meet is all relay events. Overall, in our conference, we earned second even missing a third of our team that day. Everyone stepped up and worked together. We took first in three relays, second in two relays, and third/fourth in three relays,” explained McAlpin. 

“The swimmer of the meet was Sofia Kovalenko. Sofia had fantastic swims. She was in two winning relays and one that came in second. I enjoy watching her swim. She does everything very technically correctly. Diver of the meet was Mari Hall. Mari was a great leader through diving. She was the only veteran diver at the meet from our team. She did a great job showing the new girls the ropes of how it's done,” added McAlpin 

The next chance to catch the Raiders in the pool is at Hastings Aug. 31 at 6:00 p.m. as they take on Two Rivers. The girls then travel to Skyview Middle School to take on Tartan on Sep. 7, also at 6:00 p.m.