No. 2 Grizzly Cubs roll through sectional prelims

<p>The Franklin girls swimming and diving team, ranked second in the state, went into Thursday’s sectional preliminaries with one simple goal in mind — avoid catastrophe and move as many swimmers forward as possible.</p><p>The host Grizzly Cubs took care of business, advancing all of their relays through to Saturday’s finals and putting three swimmers in the championship races of all eight individual events.</p><p>Saturday’s finals begin at 1 p.m. Diving preliminaries will start at 9 a.m.</p><p>Though the times were a bit off with top swimmers on varying degrees of cruise control, most of the top seeds still came in at the head of the pack. Franklin’s Carla Gildersleeve had the night’s fastest times in the 200-yard individual medley and the 100 butterfly, with classmate Ali Terrell just behind her in the IM and third in the butterfly.</p><p>Grizzly Cub sophomore Gracey Payne led the way in both the 50 and 100 freestyle, while junior Sarah Hoffman did the same in the 200 and 500 free. Kabria Chapman led the way in the 100 breaststroke.</p><p>Greenwood heads into Saturday’s final with the inside track in the 200 medley relay and the 400 freestyle relay. Sophomore Grace Nuhfer also came out of Thursday with the second-best times in the 50 free and the butterfly.</p><p>Indian Creek’s Lexi Wilhoit had the top time in the 100 backstroke and also advanced to the final in the 50 free.</p><p>After Franklin, Center Grove placed the most swimmers in individual championship finals with 13. Greenwood was next with nine.</p>