Members of the Wrangell High School Swim Team went to Petersburg last weekend to compete in their first meet of the season against 102 swimmers from several other schools in Southeast Alaska.
The Wrangell High School Swim Team went to Petersburg on Aug. 31 for their first meet of the season. According to Coach Jamie Roberts, the team competed against over a hundred other swimmers from six other teams from Petersburg, Craig, Juneau-Douglas, Kayhi, Thunder Mountain, and Sitka. Over the two days of competition, the team accrued 157 points, according to Roberts. This put them in sixth place out of seven. However, Roberts said that she was happy with how her swimmers did.
"I was happy, we had three of our swimmers that this was their first ever swim meet they had competed in. And some of them have had only 10 practices, some of them have had maybe up to 15 practices because our season started on August 1. So, basically, they only
had that much time to prepare for a swim meet," said Roberts.
Roberts also pointed out that several of her swimmers achieved some of their personal bests in this meet. Jimmy Baggen, for example, made a personal best of 26.33 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle, and a personal best of 6 minutes and 4.38 seconds in the 500-yard freestyle. On Saturday, he also made a personal best of 1 minute and 13.23 seconds in the 100-yard butterfly.
Renee Roberts also made several personal bests during the meet. On Friday she took first place in the 50-yard freestyle, and came in with a time of 26.28 seconds. She also made a personal best of 57.03 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle.
On Saturday, swimmer Laura Helgeson made a personal best in the 50-yard freestyle at 39.78
seconds. Wade Jack made a personal best of 1 minute and 21.16 seconds in the 100-yard breaststroke, Tasha Massin made a personal best of 40.21 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle, and Aaliyah Messmer made a personal best of 33.48 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle.
"You're not going to get a personal best every single time, but when you're starting out, usually that's kind of the trend and then it gets harder and harder to get faster," Roberts said. "So what's awesome about the swim meets is that it gives us an opportunity to see how our practice is going and shows us areas we can improve."
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