Bulldog swimming finishes third at CU Home Relay

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By Fred Kroner

Mahomet-Seymour opened the girls’ swimming season under first-year head coach Erich O’Donnell on Friday (Sept. 2) by placing third in the six-school CU Home Relay at Centennial High School.

The Bulldogs took second in the varsity division and fourth in the JV division for an overall third-place performance in the combined meet.

The varsity swimmers placed second in eight of the relays and third in the other.

The JV squad took second in one relay, fourth in two relays and fifth in four others.

The M-S varsity ended second in two four-person relays.

The 200-yard medley foursome of Eden Oelze, Lainey Howard, Maddie Logsdon and Taylor Easter were runners-up in 2 minutes, 9.28 seconds.

Also capturing second was the meet-ending 500-yard freestyle relay unit of Talynn O’Donnell, Easter, Kaleigh Holt and Oelze in 5:46.72.

The other relays consisted of two-person teams.

Logsdon and Howard were the runner-up in the 400-yard medley relay (5:20.02). O’Donnell and Easter took second in the 100-yard freestyle relay (54.96). Holt and Oelze placed second in the 200-yard butterfly relay (2:25.72). Howard and Shelby Raver ended second in the 200-yard freestyle relay (2:14.91). Easter and O’Donell added a second-place finish in the 200-yard backstroke relay (2:29.12). Oelze and Howard placed second in the 200-yard breaststroke relay (2:47.79).

Holt and O’Donnell were third in the 400-yard freestyle event (4:48.45).

The top-finishing JV relay was the second-place 100-yard medley squad of Melody Hobbs, Trinity Allen, Kaitlyn Stewart and Lai Wei (1:20.73).

The JV 100-yard freestyle relay and the JV 250-yard freestyle relay each ended in fourth place.

The 100 freestyle consisted of Raver and Reese Harrell. Their time was 1:07.15. The 250-yard freestyle relay featured Raver, Harrell, Diya Patel and Wei (3:45.21).

The Bulldogs’ other JV relays all settled for fifth-place finishes.

The 200-yard medley included Stewart and Sophie Wheeler (3:27.98). The 100-yard butterfly relay featured Wheeler and Stewart (1:46.50).

Competing on the 100-yard backstroke relay were Patel and Harrell (1:50.57). The 100-yard breaststroke relay was made up of Allen and Wheeler (1:42.99).

Team scores for the combined varsity and JV races were: 1) Champaign Central 102; 2) Centennial 66; 3) Mahomet-Seymour 65; 4) Urbana 51; 5) Urbana Uni High 44; and 6) Danville 13.

M-S returns to action on Thursday (Sept. 8) at Pontiac in a meet that also includes Bloomington Central Catholic.