C-A swim suffers narrow defeat to Ladysmith

Seven of the 11 events went to the Colby-Abby swim club in their final conference dual last Thursday against the Ladysmith-Bruce-Flambeau co-op, but the visiting Trident team’s depth ultimately turned out to be enough to top their hosts. Colby-Abby came up just short in what turned out to be their closest meet of the season, falling 91-79.

The two teams looked to be evenly matched on paper heading into the contest, and that was largely how things played out over the course of the meet. The two teams were locked in a tie after the first four events of the day, but the Ladysmith co-op was able to slightly pull away over the first few events coming out of the break.

While the Colby-Abby squad was able to win more of the events, the Tridents ability to consistently capture the third place spot gave them the advantage. Ladysmith-Bruce-Flambeau ended the day with nine third place finishes, including two out of the three final scoring spots for the relay events.

Chloe Cihlar and Madisyn Schraufnagel won all four of the events that they were part of on Thursday. In the opening 200-yard medley relay, the pair, plus teammates Hazel Flink and Brezlyn Boyer, defeated the Trident relay by over 10 seconds, putting in a time of 2:02.47. They were also part of the 400-yard freestyle relay team that took first in the final event of the day. Cihlar, Schraufnagel, Boyer and Zeline Lintrup won the relay with a time of 4:07.53.

Cihlar picked up two more individual wins, taking first in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 26.34 and the 500yard freestyle with a time of 6:02.68.

Schraufnagel’s two individual event victories came in the 200-yard IM and the 100-yard backstroke. In the 200-yard IM, she paced the field with a final time of 2:26.13. Later in the 100-yard backstroke, she had a five second lead over Ladysmith’s Hannah Minton, finishing in 1:05.07.

Lintrup grabbed the Colby-Abby squad’s final victory of the afternoon with a win in the 100-yard freestyle. In what was the closest race for first place of the meet, Lintrup narrowly defeated Trident sophomore Abby Fye, overtaking her opponent in the final 50-yards to claim the top spot of the home team. She finished with a time of 1:03.67, just seven-tenths of a second faster than Fye.

Jordan Jakel had two individual second place finishes on Thursday, finishing as the runner up in the 100-yard butterfly and the 100-yard breaststroke. She put up times of 1:10.75 and 1:25.29 in the two events respectively. Boyer also finished second in the 200-yard freestyle, posting a time of 2:26.13.

The final second-place spot earned by Colby-Abby was taken by the 200-yard freestyle relay team of Jakel, Brezlyn and Bryleigh Boyer and Olivia Krause. They put up a time of 1:57.53 in the event.

With their regular season dual meets completed, the co-op’s next challenge will be the Great Northern Conference Meet. The Colby-Abby team will find themselves in fourth place in the conference heading into the meet, though they could potentially bypass or tie the Ladysmith co-op for third place if they can perform well at the meet. While the depth of Ladysmith aided them in defeating Colby-Abby in the dual meet format, it may not come into play as much in the larger conference meet.

The GNC finale will be held in Antigo this coming Friday at 5:00 p.m.