Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
Serving the Big Horn Basin for over 100 years
WORLAND — Like the rest of the Worland High School athletic teams, the Worland Warriors swimming team heads into the Christmas break with plenty of positives to build off of. The Warriors competed in Lander and Riverton last week and were able to add another swimmer to their automatic qualifiers list for the 3A State meet in Gillette on Feb. 15-16.
Andrew Nelson joined his teammates Zach Cole, Zayne Cooper, Traeten Quigley and Stuart Trombley as the Warriors who have so far automatically qualified for state. Nelson qualified for state in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 1:11.80.
Overall, both Lander and Riverton meets turned out well for Worland. Simon Dalebout saw his first action on the diving board and didn’t zero a single dive, and as a team, Worland was able to compete against tough 3A competition that included the 22-peat 3A State champion Lander Tigers.
“It was pretty good, those [Lander] kids are pretty nice on top of being very good. We had some good times and Zayne got to swim against the two Kulow boys,” said WHS boys swimming coach Jeff Bishop. “We got Simon on the board and he did pretty good, no zeros. That says a lot being brand new. He picked up all of his dives the week before and threw them at a meet, which is pretty good.”
Along with Nelson earning his AQ, Cooper, Quigley and Trombley added to events on their AQ list. Freshman Trombley leads the team in event qualified with six; the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle, 500-yard freestyle, 100-yard breaststroke, 100-yard butterfly and 200-yard individual medley.
Cooper, a junior, isn’t far behind Trombley having AQed in five events; the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard freestyle, 200-yard freestyle, 100-yard backstroke and 100-yard butterfly. Then freshman Quigley has AQed in four events; 500-yard freestyle, 100-yard backstroke, 100-yard butterfly and 200-yard individual medley.
“Andrew qualified in the 100 fly which was great. Traeten and Stuart seemed to qualify in everything. Gabe and Diamond are right there and close to qualifying,” said Bishop.
With a three-week break until their next meet in Cody on Jan. 4, the Warriors will make the most of their practice time by having a quality-over-quantity mindset.
“It’s going to be weird and we’ll have a couple of weekends off before we go to Cody. We’ll increase our yardage and we’re going with a quality over quantity philosophy for our workouts. We want to continue to refine our technique and build up that base of course,” said Bishop.
The Warriors also got a surprise last week when Blake Mautz was able to begin swimming with the team. Mautz was expected to sit out for most the year as he recovered from hip surgery, but he was given the OK by his doctor to get back into the water.
Mautz likely won’t begin swimming competitively until later in the year but Bishop, as well as the rest of the Warriors, are thrilled to have him back in the pool.
“We did get Blake back, he’s in the water and he looks pretty good. We’ll have to limit some starts and turns, so we’re looking for him to get an event the last half of the season. We’re very excited for his return,” said Bishop.
