Piranhas head up to Colombia Falls
After hosting their home swim meet last week, a smaller Plains Piranhas team traveled to Colombia Falls this weekend. Despite their youth and small size, the team competed very well.
Less than half of the team's swimmers made the trip to Colombia Falls dwindling the number's of one of the smallest teams in the state to 11 swimmers, a miniscule number compared with the likes of Hamilton, about 180 swimmers, and Colombia Falls, about 90 swimmers.
After hosting their home swim meet last week, a smaller Plains Piranhas team traveled to Colombia Falls this weekend. Despite their youth and small size, the team competed very well.
Less than half of the team's swimmers made the trip to Colombia Falls dwindling the number's of one of the smallest teams in the state to 11 swimmers, a miniscule number compared with the likes of Hamilton, about 180 swimmers, and Colombia Falls, about 90 swimmers.
"We're very small compared to a lot of teams," explains Coach Kelli Nance. "We're still very little."
For this reason Coach Nance was very excited about the performance of her young eight and under (bantam) swimmers. Many of them placed in the top 11 on Sunday, a high finish considering that the meet saw 49 swimmers competing in this category alone.
Among the bantam swimmers who placed high at the meet were: Natalee Deschamps, Makiya Dubois, Grace Alexander and Jacelynn Dubois.
Grace especially excelled inside the bantam category who, through a lucky mistake, discovered a new stroke that proved to be natural for her.
Grace was meant to compete in the 25 fly, but was accidentally placed instead in the 25 back where she finished third.
"She really didn't want to do it, but she did it and got third," says Coach Nance who went on to explain that Grace was a natural swimmer who was good at every stroke. The only other piranha to place higher in a stroke was Jacelynn who placed second in the 50 free.
With the help of Grace and the bantam swimmers the team placed 11th out of 12 teams at the meet and scored a total of 71 points, an impressive total considering three of the team's top swimmers weren't there to add to the team's point total.
Laurel Danhof, the only high school swimmer on the team and Danika Whitcomb both did not attend the meet, and Keely Benson swam on Saturday but had to leave before the finals on Sunday.
Even though Keely she competed very well on Saturday scoring a third, fifth and seventh place in her events.
"She did exceptionally well for it being her second meet," says Coach Nance.
This weekend the piranhas have Shelby on their schedule. After that their last meet before divisionals will be in Chester. Divisionals will be at Fort Benton.