Swimmers wrap it up

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Editor
 
Five of the seven Newcastle High School members of head coach Doug Scribner’s swim team competed in individual events Thursday and Friday at the 3A State Meet in Gillette. Despite having only Ramsey Gross advance to finals on Friday as an individual, and two of the three relays do the same, Scribner was very pleased with how his team performed at another incredibly fast competition.
“It was a super fast meet,” he said. “Last year we also had one individual and two relays advance, and this year we did so again and we had a lot of personal best times in most of our events.”
Gross was seeded well in the 50 Freestyle, and several other Dogies were seeded close enough to get in the top 12, so Scribner had to make relay team assignments based on those individual events. 
The team of Gross, Travis Scribner, Zade Orsborn and Nate Strickland swam very well in the 200 Medley Relay finishing ninth in prelims on Thursday, which was good enough for them to advance to the consolation finals on Friday. 
On Friday, Sam Scribner replaced Strickland for the final leg, and the team was able to drop from 1:58.44 in prelims to 1:55.92 to maintain their ninth-place finish. In doing so, Gross, Travis, and Orsborn all had personal bests on their respective legs.
The next race was the 50 Freestyle where both Gross and Robert Humes competed. After being sick for several weeks, Humes was back in good health and though he finished 17th and out of the running for the finals, he was able to carve off 1.06 seconds to finish with a personal best of 25.35 in the race.
“It was great that Robert was back,” Scribner said. “And being able to pick up a PR is a great way for him to end his career because he isn’t leaving with any regrets.”
Ramsey also swam a PR of 23.99 in the 50 which was good enough to put him in ninth place going into finals. He wasn’t able to replicate that time on Friday, however he held his ninth-place finish with a time of 24.02.
“Ramsey was really excited to break 24 seconds on Thursday,” Scribner said. “His time was about half a second faster than his previous best, which is impressive in such a short race.”
Zade Orsborn swam a season best by dropping two 2.45 seconds in the 100 Butterfly, however it was only good enough to garner him a 20th-place finish in prelims. 
“Zade did some of the things we’ve been working on, and
he looked super smooth and
he took it out fast enough,” Scribner began. “We were hoping he’d be faster on the second 50, but that ended up being right on his time, so he wasn’t able to drop quite enough time to make the top 12.” 
Humes and Sam Scribner swam the 100 Free, finishing 19th and 27th respectively. Humes once again had a great personal race, dropping almost 2 seconds to be on his season best time.
In the 200 Free Relay, Orsborn, Strickland, Logan Olson and Humes swam a 1:47 in the prelims and the team was fast enough to make it into the top 12. All four had really good times which put them 10th in prelims then dropped over a second to hold their 10th place in finals.
Gross then swam the 100 Backstroke and PRd with a 1:05, finishing 15th, then Travis and Sam Scribner ended the individual events by swimming right next to each other in the 100 Breaststroke where they finished 23rd and 24th respectively.
“That was fun because that created a little bit of competition given Travis didn’t want Sam to beat him,” Scribner chuckled. “That pushed Travis to have a personal best with a 1:12, so it was also great for him to end on his best time.”
Though the 400 Free team of Orsborn, Humes, Gross and Sam Scribner finished 13th and just out of the running to compete in the finals on Friday, they put up a very fast time of 3:59.51.
“All the teams were under four minutes which I don’t think I’ve ever seen,” Scribner said. “There were a lot of great, fast races.” 
The Dogies graduate three this year in Humes, Travis Scribner and Orsborn, but Scribner expects to be bringing in three freshmen next year.
“We’ve had a really good season. Last year we had 10 qualifying times with eight of our nine on the team qualifying,” Scribner reported. “This year we had seven on the team, and five qualified for 14 different events. They worked hard, and we have some good talent coming up who are strong, having swam in club and we won’t have any seniors.