Franklin’s Aleksandr Ries swims the 100-yard breaststroke during Saturday’s sectional meet.
Gary Brockman | For the Daily Journal
Franklin swim coach Zach DeWitt enjoyed his celebratory post-sectional jump into the pool on Saturday as much as he had any of the ones that came before it, but perhaps not for as long as one might expect given how long he’d had to wait for it.
The host Grizzly Cubs reclaimed top dog status for the first time since 2021 by holding off two-time defending champion Center Grove, 503-475, but DeWitt had barely had a chance to towel off and change clothes before he was imploring his team to quickly shift its focus to next weekend’s state meet.
Winning the sectional meet was a nice accomplishment, he told his swimmers, but that trophy remains secondary to the goal of placing Franklin back among the state’s elite teams.
“A lot of these boys on this team haven’t won a title yet,” DeWitt said. “I understand the significance of that, and so I try not to be a curmudgeon as they get excited to experience something for the first time, but that being said, if you want to swim well at that stage, it’s really important that we turn the page as quickly as we can.”
Like Franklin, Center Grove will try to immediately pivot to state.
“We had the meet that we wanted overall,” Trojans coach Brad Smith said, “and so we’re really, really pleased. … Our focus is always at the state meet, and we got a lot of guys to go through, and we’ll be ready for next week.”
Greenwood finished fourth in the final team standings with 190 points. Whiteland was sixth with 164 and Indian Creek eighth with 95.
Franklin had put itself in a strong position to win the sectional with its performance in Thursday’s preliminaries, and they were able to weather a nice bounce-back effort from the Trojans on Saturday to secure the crown.
Center Grove got its day started on a high note when the 200-yard medley relay team of Henry Lyness, Isaac Lewis, Nikhil Iyer and Anthony Cuadros hit the wall in 1:34.84 to beat the Grizzly Cubs by .56 seconds, but Franklin struck right back with its own narrow victory in the 200 freestyle, where senior Isaac Layton out-touched the Trojans’ Max Hite to win, 1:41.56 to 1:41.73.
Grizzly Cub sophomore Aleksandr Ries edged Lewis in the 200 individual medley, with Franklin’s Alijah Hall also earning an automatic bid to the state meet in the event. After a comfortable first-place finish from Austin Clark (a personal-best 431.05 points) in the 1-meter diving competition — Clark advances to Tuesday’s regional in Jasper — Franklin had a solid 202-177 lead.
Lyness (51.05 seconds) nipped Layton (51.41) in the 100 butterfly, where both earned state berths, and Hite claimed victory in the 100 free (46.87), trimming the Grizzly Cub cushion to 20 points. But Franklin senior Franco Chirinos dominated the field in the 500 free, winning in 4:49.97, and the quartet of Gabe Holtz, Ries, Lucas Ackermann and Jacob Meinczinger effectively closed off Center Grove’s path to victory by winning the 200 freestyle relay in 1:26.42.
A blazing-fast Lyness won the 100 backstroke in 49.57, the second-fastest sectional time in the state, before Ries countered by swimming the 100 breaststroke in 57.11 to beat fellow state qualifiers Lewis (58.93) and Ackermann (59.03).
The Trojans’ 400 freestyle relay team of Hite, Cuadros, Mason Bridges and Lyness pulled away to win in 3:12.59, but the Grizzly Cubs still had enough to claim the overall team title.
“We understood the importance of the moment on Thursday,” DeWitt said, “and quite honestly, (the Trojans) were terrific today. I think it’ll largely go unnoticed, but they had a slew of guys who were terrific. We were pretty good on Thursday and pretty good today. We were good where we needed to be.”
Both squads advanced three relay teams to the state meet.
And while each side expressed a desire to push Saturday’s result aside and mentally move ahead to the IU Natatorium, there was at least some acknowledgement in the moment that there’s something special about the swim rivalry between Johnson County’s two current superpowers.
“Right before that last relay, Zach and I were just talking — this is fun,” Smith said. “This is what it’s about. Sometimes you wish it would be easy, but this is what makes it exciting; the crowd’s cheering … I think ultimately, this is what makes this sectional so great.”
A moment worth savoring, if only there were more time to do so.
