Six Piranhas advance to state meet
FORT BENTON – The Plains Piranhas stormed through this year’s divisional swimming meet, sending multiple swimmers to the state competition next weekend.
The 2014 Western Divisional State Meet was held last weekend in Fort Benton of Choteau County.
Competition started on Saturday, July 26 and ended with the final swimming events on Sunday, July 27.
“The divisional meet went well. We had six individuals and two relay teams move onto the state meet,” Plains Head Coach Kayla Hoar said.
A rigorous week of practice, which the Piranhas used to prepare themselves for the stiff competition present at Fort Benton, seemed to pay off for the young swim team and their first year head coach.
The six individuals from the local swim team competed hard and did well to earn a spot in the final meet of the year.
Anna Pallister, Matthew Woods, Kendra Newman, Danika Whitcomb, Genevieve Deschamps and Alexa Perterline will all by moving on to next week’s round of competition, where they will face off against the best swimmers in the state of Montana.
Additionally, the coach of the swim team was impressed with how well the swimmers who won’t be moving onto the state meet performed against the formidable competition present at the divisional championship.
Members of the Plains swim team continued to shave precious seconds from their final times.
This progression has become somewhat of a norm for the Piranhas since their early season swim meets and had delighted their new coach.
“All the swimmers did great. Even our swimmers who didn’t qualify for state were able to take time off,” Hoar said.
The Piranhas will also be sending two relay teams to the state swim meet in Conrad.
Following strong performances at the divisional meet the Plains Piranhas will be well represented in the eight and under age group relay competitions next weekend.
Plains swimmers on this relay team performed well enough to earn a spot in two separate events at the state competition.
The Plains eight and under relay team will compete in both the freestyle relay and the medley relay at the forthcoming state championship.
Following a week of arduous practices the swim coach said this week was going to take a bit of a different approach when it came to preparing for the final meet of the season.
“We are going to mostly work on technique in the week before state,” Hoar said.
Entering the final week of their season the members of the Plains Piranhas have a lot to be proud of.
The swim team is a diverse group of young athletes ranging in age from those younger than eight to youths about to graduate from high school.
From their fifth place finish at the annual Plains swim meet to their most recent accomplishment of sending a strong field to the state competition, the swim team had quite a year under Coach Hoar.
Next weekend those swimmers, who qualified in Fort Benton, will make the journey for one more meet.
The state meet will take place on Saturday, August 2 and Sunday August 3 and will be held in Conrad.