This Weekend for Winona Swimming

Ok, It is late and I am sick, really sick. But many of you are logging on to check what happened so here is a quick synopsis. More details to follow tomorrow.

Winona Swimming & Diving had an GREAT and active weekend. That goes for the FUTURE stars, PRESENT stars and PAST stars.

Start with Thursday Night. The WSHS JV swimmers were at the Big 9 JV Meet in Owatonna. These stars of the future got their chance to shine. Because there were unlimited event entries, there was not a team score kept. If there had been scoring, Winona would have been at or near the top.  The A Relay won the 400 Free Relay and the B relay bested 3 of the A relays entered. The 200IM saw Winona go 1-2.  We placed 3-4 in the 200 Free, won the 100 Fly, the 200 Free Relay, and 100 Breast. Winona took 2^nd in the 100 Free and 500 Free. The girls did awesome and had a lot of fun doing it. I will provide more details later.

Friday night and Saturday Winona Alumni were in action. Matt Papenfuss and Abbey Staats helped their U of MN squads defeat Wisconsin at the U of MN Aquatic Center Friday night. Saturday, Aimee Peterson swam against Alyssa Trainor in a Triple dual meet between SCSU, UW Eau Claire and UW Steven Point. Lastly Ryan Whalen was scheduled to take part in the Tommie Relays swimming for St. Thomas where St. Mary's University was also in attendance.

The topper was the Present stars putting together impressive swims to earn a 3^rd place Big 9 Conference finish behind power houses Rochester JM and Century. Their high finish was never in question as their point total of 275 was way ahead of late charging Mankato West at 206, Faribault at 205 and Owatonna at 189 at 4, 5, 6 respectively. Winona won the 100 Freestyle and the 200 Freestyle Relay, accompanied by high finishes in the 50 Free (2^nd), 100 Fly (3^rd), 100 Free (3^rd, 9^th, and 10^th), 100 Breast (3^rd).  His swimmers’ performances earned Head Coach Steve Burt the recognition of the other head coaches and won the 2010 Big 9 Coach of the Year Award to put the ultimate cap on the weekend!

More details later after I rest up a bit!