Allie Lacy and Franklin will be trying to win a seventh consecutive sectional championship this weekend.
Daily Journal file photo
Rare is the opportunity to see Center Grove — one of the true athletic Goliaths in Indiana — positioned in the role of the plucky underdog trying to pull off a culture-shifting upset.
At the girls swimming and diving sectional on Monday evening, the Trojans find themselves in such a spot.
For the first time since taking the trophy in 2015, Center Grove’s girls come into the meet with a realistic hope of reclaiming the title from Franklin, which has owned the top spot for six consecutive years. The Trojans dethroned the Grizzly Cubs at the Johnson County meet in December, fueling the battle tensions at both pools.
Franklin’s girls have been dominant during their recent run of sectional success, winning by an average margin of 152.5 points. Last season’s 485-411 victory was the only meet without a triple-digit spread.
But after Center Grove’s 502-467 county win, which came on the heels of a narrow 99-88 Grizzly Cub triumph in the teams’ season-opening dual meet, both squads are anticipating a down-to-the-wire showdown this time around.
“I would say especially more this year, sectionals has to be a big focus for us because we know it’s going to come down to maybe even the last few races,” Franklin junior Allie Lacy said. “We’ve already looked at the points; it’s going to be so close. We beat Center Grove in our dual meet, they beat us at county, so every person plays a very crucial role in scoring out the meet, and every day we’re all thinking about that — what we have to do to win.
“In the past years, it hasn’t necessarily been a worry … (but) it’s down to the wire now, and the thought of ‘we might lose’ is really driving us to work a lot harder, because we want to win so badly.”
The differences between the Grizzly Cubs and Trojans are pretty clear. Franklin has a top-heavy lineup — Lacy and freshman Lili Ratzlaff are both expected to be double-podium swimmers at the state meet, and senior Paige Lawrence scored in both of her individual events there last winter — but not a lot in the way of proven depth. Center Grove doesn’t have the same type of star power, but their ability to put three swimmers in the championship final of nearly every event levels the playing field.
“In middle school, our coaches would always talk to us about how our twos and threes just need to be able to beat their twos and threes,” Trojans senior Kiersten Smith said. “It just makes us feel like a much better team having those twos and threes that are able to perform up with other people’s twos and threes, and even some schools’ ones.”
Adding to the intrigue is the fact that Center Grove will be hosting the girls meet for the first time since 2005, when the Trojans were still in the middle of what became a 26-year run of sectional championships before the Grizzly Cubs snapped it.
“It’s a really nice pool, and so that in itself makes it feel like a big event,” Franklin coach Zach DeWitt added. “My only memory thus far is not a good one there, but that doesn’t mean that that’s going to weigh into the way that we swim on that particular day.”
Center Grove will be facing a similar situation in the boys sectional at Franklin in two weeks.
Since pulling out a stunning three-point victory by winning the decisive 400-yard freestyle relay in 2013, Franklin has been the top dog locally. Only one other time during their current nine-year reign have the Grizzly Cubs been in danger of losing; that was two years ago, when they avenged a county defeat by again taking the final relay to win by six points.
An 83-point loss to the Trojans at county this season certainly put Franklin on notice.
“It was definitely disheartening in the moment,” Grizzly Cub senior Callum Buchanan said. “It was pretty hard for all the boys; there were definitely some teary eyes in the locker room, but I think that fueled the fire underneath all of us. I’ve certainly been more motivated this year than I have any year in the past, and I know a lot of these boys are super motivated to keep training, keep working hard and go get that win back.”
Meanwhile, Center Grove’s boys and girls are focused on returning to their once-familiar spot atop the local pecking order — and feeling for the first time in a little while as though that spot is within their reach.
Thus, Trojans coach Jim Todd doesn’t feel any need to deliver big motivational speeches.
“These kids, they’re not dumb kids,” he said. “They’re smart kids, and they know what they want and what they’re working toward. I don’t have to remind them of anything about whether they want to win the sectionals or not.”
“It would mean a lot for me,” Smith said of a potential sectional victory. “We’re in a really good sectional; there’s a lot of really good teams, even aside from Franklin. There’s a lot of tough competition that we would have to beat, and so it would mean a lot.”
Regardless of which side prevails in this rivalry, the next few weeks figure to offer some of the most exciting swimming that Johnson County has seen in quite some time.
Training and talent have put the Grizzly Cubs and Trojans within arm’s reach of one another. In the end, it may simply come down to a battle of wills.
“Ultimately, on days like that — especially when the meets are so close and decided by such few points — a lot of times you’ll find that the hungrier team will find a way,” DeWitt said. “Does that make us hungrier from experiences in December? I don’t know. Only time will tell. But if the meet’s close, the hungrier team will find a way, in my opinion.”
