Lady Warrior swimming and diving enjoying the week off after strong conference outing

WORLAND - After a hard-fought performance at the 3A East girls swimming conference meet in Douglas, on Oct. 19-20, the Worland Lady Warriors enjoyed the week off as they prepare for the 3A State meet in Laramie next weekend.

The Lady Warriors finished second as a team scoring 276 points and were only 26 points shy from first place Buffalo. While they were not able to successfully defend their 3A East title for the fifth straight season, Worland gave it their best shot and certainly made Buffalo sweat it out.

"Buffalo was kind of a buzz-saw, but we overperformed by our own expectations," said WHS swimming coach Mike Blissett. "It was to the point we could have even won the meet when we were looking at it on Friday night. If we had swam out of our minds again, on Saturday, and gotten help from some other teams. We could have potentially won that meet."

Lady Warriors senior Juli Warren successfully defended her titles and broke the conference records in the breaststroke and individual medley and was on the medley relay team that took first with Ella Stanek, Kylie Warren and Macy Trombley.

It came as no surprise that Warren was named the 3A East athlete of the year. Warren wasn't the only one in her family to receive an award, her mother and WHS assistant girls swimming coach Danielle Warren was named the 3A East assistant coach of the year.

"She set a new conference record in the 200 IM for metered," said Blissett. "She set a new individual record for 200 IM by four seconds. She set a new record in the 200-meter breaststroke by three seconds and our medley relay broke the metered record by three seconds. We just shredded those records."

Senior diver Kyra Klinghagen had a stellar meet as well. Klinghagen was locked in and turned in her best performance of the season, to date, scoring 316 points on 11 dives to finish second behind Douglas' Moria McPherson.

"For people who have been watching Kyra's progression from her freshman year, it was obvious that those first eight dives she did that day were the best sequence of dives of her entire career. She was on fire and awesome to watch," said Blissett.

After automatically qualifying for the state tournament in the 100-yard butterfly, Kelli Frimml's confidence has been sky-high and with each meet, she's gotten better and better. She even surprised her coaches with her swimming at conference, as she placed second in the 100-meter butterfly.

Blissett said, "I didn't expect Kelli to take second, that was way off my radar. She dropped a bunch of time to get there. It was a fun race to watch because all of the sudden she figured something out in her stroke and hit the afterburners and dusted the girl that was next to her.

"We were talking about it after the race and she said 'That girl was right next to me and all of the sudden she was gone.' She got second by a long ways too, she definitively took second place. That was really cool and as hard as she's worked this season she deserved it."

Scoring 276 points and pushing Buffalo as they did, it was hard for Blissett to single out just a few performances because the team as a whole was excellent.

"We were able to place almost everybody and had big time drops from everyone. Meg DeBolt dropped around 45 seconds in her 200 free," said Blissett. "That's insane. A lot of our freshmen were able to place and drop off time too. Ashanti [Pedraza] took fifth in diving and, as a freshman, to perform all 11 dives without zeroing out one is a big deal. She also swam the 200 IM and took eighth, and as a freshman scored points for us."

Added: Blissett, "It was a terrific meet, I had coaches coming up to me telling me that the girls were on fire. That's what we were looking for, we wanted to put up a fight and we scared Buffalo. At one point we were ahead by 20 points on Saturday. In the end, they overpowered us and they had a little bit more depth than we did."

The loss of Ellyse Russell, who moved with her family over the summer, could have been used as an excuse for this Lady Warriors team to not try as hard this season. Russell is a lot like Juli Warren, a big point getter who can swim in any event. But rather than fold the Lady Warriors stepped up big time and pushed aside that built-in excuse.

"It's easy to dwell on something like that but when you look at the body of work our team put together, you can't argue with it and can't be disappointed. I never thought second place would feel as good as it does. I was so, overwhelmingly amazed by our team at conference," said Blissett.

More evidence of the Lady Warriors mental toughness was how they handled the Douglas pool. The pool in Douglas is different from most in the state, for one it's a metered pool and slightly longer. There are no windows and it uses saline in the pool, rather than chlorine.

Worland did compete in Douglas during the regular season on Sept. 29 to get used to those pool conditions. While the pool was different from what they're used to when it came time for conference, they were not going to let that slow them down either.

Blissett said, "The first time we were there they were bothered by it. The added length is going to mess with your mind a bit. Also, it's not a normal chlorine pool, they use saline so it's like salt water and that messes with you too.

"Everything has a different feel to it and I'm glad we went before because we were able to talk about it. What we told them is that none of that matters because everyone else is swimming and diving in the same conditions. If you can put all of that out of your mind you can give yourself a psychological advantage."

For practice this week the Lady Warriors began their taper and to focus on the specifics of their events, as the 3A State meet begins on Friday in Laramie.

"We're tapering now and focusing on speed, lots of rest, focusing on power and recovery. That way the body can get used to exerting a maximum amount of energy in short intervals so you can explode when you hit the water at state," said Blissett.

A preview of the Lady Warriors 3A State swimming meet will be published next week in the Northern Wyoming Daily News.