Center Grove’s girls swim team celebrates after winning the sectional championship on Monday night.
Chris Williams | For the Daily Journal
Never let it be said that preliminary swims don’t mean anything.
Looking for their first sectional championship since 2015, Center Grove’s girls used their superior depth to build a big advantage in Saturday’s prelims. That edge — and a 22-point head start courtesy of the Trojan divers — was enough to fend off a Franklin rally during Monday night’s thrilling finals to earn a 458-450 victory.
Greenwood finished a solid third with 320 points, and Whiteland was fifth at 160.5. Greenwood Christian (33 points) and Indian Creek (27) were ninth and 10th.
The Grizzly Cubs had won the last six sectional crowns, but this one belonged to the host Trojans.
“We knew that what we did on Saturday was going to make or break the meet,” Center Grove coach Jim Todd said, “so we had to put it all on the line on Saturday. That makes it hard to come back for finals after that, but these girls did an awesome job. They held on, and I couldn’t be prouder of them.
“We set ourselves up really good (Saturday), and we just had to keep pushing and do our best,” Trojan sophomore Lara Phipps added. “We knew we’d be good in finals … we just had to get that last push and hopefully win, and we did.”
Franklin got an early momentum boost Monday with a victory in the 200-yard medley relay, which Allie Lacy, Kathleen Lacy, Lili Ratzlaff and Jenna Miller swam in a time of 1:45.58. Greenwood’s runner-up quartet of Chloe Vitatoe, Madison Peckinpaugh, Naomi Weaver and Reagan Graves also qualified for the state meet in 1:47.01.
Ratzlaff turned right around and took first in the 200 freestyle, hitting the wall with a personal-best time of 1:49.04. Three other county swimmers — Center Grove’s Phipps and Kiersten Smith and Franklin’s Paige Lawrence — also came in under the automatic state cut time.
Allie Lacy torched the field in the 200 individual medley, finishing in 2:03.95, and Franklin actually had a slim 155-153 edge after that event. The Grizzly Cubs, though, took it on the chin during the 50 freestyle and 100 butterfly, watching as Center Grove extended its lead.
Lexi Stuart claimed the 50 for the Trojans, narrowly edging Franklin’s Jenna Miller (24.31 to 24.36), and after Phipps comfortably won the 100 butterfly in 55.56, the host team was sitting on a 244-203 lead.
Little by little, Franklin started chipping away at that margin. Ratzlaff (51.38) and Miller finished 1-2 in the 100 freestyle, and Lawrence claimed victory in the 500 free at 5:06.27.
Center Grove’s 200 freestyle relay squad of Stuart, Smith, Tenley Wilkins and Phipps roared to a first-place finish in 1:36.38, bumping the Trojans’ advantage to 359-330. A win by Allie Lacy in the 100 backstroke (55.87 seconds) and a big scoring advantage in the 100 breaststroke helped the Grizzly Cubs trim the lead going into the 400 freestyle relay, which Lacy, Miller, Lawrence and Ratzlaff won with a time of 3:28.91 — but Center Grove placed right behind them in that final event, securing enough points to wrap it up.
“The last relay, we knew we just had to get second,” Phipps said. “We were all excited, and our energy just spilled into that last relay, and it was a lot of fun.”
The victory was especially sweet for the Trojan seniors, who had grown tired of watching Franklin celebrate at the end of this meet each season.
“It’s so awesome,” Smith said. “Especially after we lost the dual meet to start the season, I think we really wanted to get revenge. After we won county, we knew we could do it, but we still knew it was going to be a really tough battle to get to where we are now.”
While there were plenty of tears shed on Franklin’s side of the pool deck after the meet, Grizzly Cubs coach Zach DeWitt said he was proud of the effort his girls made in nearly erasing what had been a sizable deficit on paper coming in.
“I hate to lose; I will remember this forever,” he said. “But at the end of the day, I don’t know if I’ve ever been more proud of a group of girls. They came out, they swam well all day long, they supported one another. That’s what Franklin swimming is all about.
“As horrible as this sounds, I am so pleased to see that they’re crying, because it means something. Franklin swimming means a lot, and that’s never going to change.”
Up next is the state meet, which begins with Friday evening preliminaries. After Monday’s swims, both the Trojans and Grizzly Cubs feel good about their chances to place well at the IU Natatorium.
Franklin’s girls have finished in the top five each of the last four years.
“This is going to fuel the fire, 100%,” Ratzlaff said after Monday’s defeat. “We’re definitely going to work harder this week, whether it’s tapering or not, than we ever have. … What we’re trying to do at state, mainly, is kind of redeem ourselves, get top eight the most that we can.”
Johnson County will likely have more state qualifiers once callbacks are announced, but how many will depend on other sectional results, which were not all known at press time.
