FLOYDS KNOBS
Breanna Hammond placed fourth in diving, while Seymour swimmers turned in lifetime bests in 23 of 24 swims to lead the Owls to a third-place finish in the Floyd Central Girls Sectional Saturday.
Floyd Central outscored Jeffersonville 490.5-466.5 for the title, and the Owls scored 256 points.
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Jennings County was fourth with 192 points and New Albany was fifth in the 16-team field with 184 points.
Jeff edged Floyd by one point for the title a year ago.
“We knew we’d pretty much have a dogfight with Jennings County and New Albany for third, so we went out to do our job on Thursday (trials) to set the table for today,” Seymour coach Dave Boggs said. “We had a great meet concerning the weather missing at least three days, and some missed five days of practice, missed a whole week of swimming.
“We had a great (Hoosier Hills) conference meet and we came back and had an even better sectional, so I’m really thrilled with how the girls performed this week.”
With so many personal bests, Boggs couldn’t pick one that stood out over another.
“We had a lot of surprises across the board,” Boggs said. “I hate to single anyone out because we’ve been working hard all year. We stress quality not quantity, which is on the back of their sectional shirts. I really can’t think of one thing that was ugly in this meet.
“You go back to that first meet with Madison, the Madison and Jeffersonville meets. I thought ‘Oh my gosh. We’ve got a lot of work to do.’ It came all together in this meet and conference. The process worked really, really well.”
Boggs said he was pleased to see Hammond advance in diving.
“I think she had a nice, solid day, which at this level you may not have any great dives, but don’t have any bad ones,” Boggs said. “She was solid throughout every dive. If you do that hopefully good things will happen.”
The junior scored 303.05 points for her 11 dives. Madison Roehrs of Providence was third with 324.70 points, and the sectional champion was Hailey Brown of Jennings County with a score of 402.30.
The diving regional will be held Tuesday night in Bloomington.
Seymour opened the meet with Katie Turner, Mary Kate Pritchett, Molly Hayes and Sandy Cerino teaming up to place third in the medley relay with a time of 2-minutes, .05-seconds.
Placing third individually were Turner in the 100 back with a time of 1:00.92, and Pritchett in the 100 breast at 1:11.94.
Seymour was fourth in both the 200 free and 400 free relays, and Turner was fifth in the 50 free.
Also scoring in the championship races for the Owls was Marcegui Vasquez, who was eighth in the 200 free and 500 free.
Seymour scored points in all 12 events.
“You really can’t go by seeds,” Boggs said. “Even coming into Saturday you don’t know who was rested, who was getting a rub down, who was wearing their racing suit on Thursday. We focus on what we do individually as athletes and drop time. If you drop time enough the places will take care of themselves. It was a great day.”
The Seymour boys will host Trinity Lutheran and Providence for their final meet tonight starting at 7 p.m.
“It will be the boys’ last chance to make the sectional team,” Boggs said. “We’re putting people in events they need to swim and give them every chance possible to make it, and they all know it. That’s the beauty of this sport.”