Colby-Abby swim takes fourth in conference

The Colby-Abby swim team traveled to Antigo for the Great Northern Conference meet last Friday, where they battled against their seven other conference opponents in their final meet before the WIAA postseason. The co-op took fourth in the competition, finishing the day with 137 points, maintaining their fourth place spot in the overall conference standings.

Twenty personal bests were set by the Colby-Abby squad in the pool on Friday, a solid showing heading into the sectional meet in two weekends.

The results of the conference meet did not do much to move the needle at the top of the GNC standings, as the top four teams from the regular season duals finished in the same order in the conference final. Rhinelander led the competition with 466 points, winning nine of the 11 events, with only Tomahawk’s Paige Dekiep breaking up the Hodags’ sweep of the competition by taking first in the 50-meter freestyle and the 100-meter butterfly. Medford came in second, scoring 256 points, and the Ladysmith co-op narrowly beat out Colby-Abby for the third spot, finishing with 149 points.

Madisyn Schraufnagel was one of the few non-Hodags to earn an all-conference honor at the meet. The Colby-Abby sophomore collected a second-team all-conference award after notching a runner-up finish in the 100-meter backstroke. She broke up a quartet of Rhinelander swimmers at the top of the event, beating out the Hodags’ Emma Houg by seven-tenths of a second for the second place spot. Her time of 1:10.54 was bested only by Rhinelander’s Celia Francis, who won the event with a time of 1:06.41.

Schraufnagel also picked up a third place finish for the co-op in her other individual event, the 200-meter IM. She finished with a time of 2:37.37, placing her behind just two Rhinelander swimmers but two-and-half seconds ahead of Medford’s Sydney Sperl, who took fourth.

The co-op picked up three more top-five finishes at the conference meet, grabbing two of those three in the bookend relays. The 200-meter medley relay team claimed a fourth place spot and the 400-meter freestyle relay finished fifth.

The medley relay of Schraufnagel, Brezlyn Boyer, Jordan Jakel and Chloe Cihlar opened the competition with a solid race, barely missing out on a third place finish. Their time of 2:13.52 was just two-tenths of a second slower than Medford’s top relay in the event. Then the 400-meter freestyle relay team of Cihlar, Schraufnagel, Olivia Krause and Zeline Lintrup closed out the meet with one of the co-op’s best placements, recording a time of 4:41.18 to finish just behind the Ladysmith co-op in the event.

Lintrup had the final top-five finish for Colby-Abby on Friday, taking fifth in the 100-meter freestyle. It was a tight race for the spot, with the fifth through eighth place finishers all finishing with times within one second of each other. Lintrup put herself at the top of that group, posting a time of 1:10.02 to edge out Medford’s Tana Rappe by two-tenths of a second.

Cihlar added two top-ten performances, taking sixth in a highly competitive 50-meter freestyle event with a time of 28.84, and eighth in the 400-meter freestyle, posting a time of 5:17.61. Jakel collected a seventh place finish in the 100-meter butterfly with a time of 1:20.05, Brezlyn Boyer had a ninth place finish in the 100-meter breaststroke with a time of 1:34.53 and a tenth place finish in the 200-meter freestyle with a time of 2:37.35 and Bryleigh Boyer had a ninth place finish in the 200-meter IM with a time of 3:14.15. Hazel Flink rounded out the co-op’s top ten individual finishers with a tenth place finish in the 100-meter butterfly with a time of 1:26.73.

The team will have a two-week break between events, with their Division 2 sectional meet in Merrill scheduled for Saturday, November 4. All eight GNC teams will compete in the same sectional, though there will be six additional area teams added into the fray. The meet is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m.