Girls swimming Silver Creek honors its seniors with win over Erie
Honored at their final dual meet Thursday, Silver Creek senior standouts Kylie Dirks and Emma Hermeston were among the swimmers who can feel the end of a high school career nearing. A flyby season, however, hadn’t given them — anyone, really — much time to prepare.
“It has gone by really fast,” said Dirks, who plans on swimming at Colorado Mesa, while Hermeston is committed to Kentucky. “But really we’re trying to make the most of it. Keep treating it like a normal season and just do the best we can.”
Dirks helped lead all the relays to victory, Hermeston won the 100 backstroke and was part of two of the relays, and the
Raptors stayed perfect on the season with a 122-63 win over Erie at the City of Longmont Centennial Swimming Pool.
Elle Feneide added a win in the 500-yard freestyle (5:33), and Feneide and Haley Halperin were also pivotal in each relay victor y for the Raptors, who won seven of 12 events. Ema Dostal took the 200 freestyle (2:08.60) and Mica Kimmett won the diving event.
Because of it, Silver Creek finished atop the Northern League with a 5-0 record in league duals. Niwot and Holy Family were also undefeated in league coming into the day.
Next up, the conference championship is set for March 6 in Greeley with a limited number of swimmers allowed. It will be the last chance teams can post a state qualifying time with only 20 swimmers per class event eligible to make the state meet.
“There’s still people trying to crunch to get into Conference because we’re doing Conference different than normal,” Silver Creek coach Debbie Stewart said. “And then to get that top 20 — we’re used to having 11 shots and having cutoff times and stuff like that. The girls, if they’re not getting it in one event, they’re tr ying to (make it) in another event. But we don’t have a long enough season to play around with that. It’s a quick season, but for tunately, we got a season.”
Sophomores Anna
Lillie and Anna Dunn each won two individual events to lead Erie.
Lillie collected another pair of top-30 times in the classification with wins in the 50 and 100 freestyle for the Tigers. Her mark of 55.79 in the 100 free was her best of the season and the 24th best in the classification.
Dunn won the 200 IM in 2:27.86 and the 100 breaststroke in 1:21.38. Kambrie Payne added a win in the 100 butter fly in 1:07.92.
“It’s been quick, definitely quick,” Erie coach Doug Simkins said. “Originally we thought we’d be starting at the normal time in October. We did offseason workouts until we couldn’t. And then we heard we will be able to go, and then we were going to have to cut. We went from a program of over 100 last year and got it down to 25 this year with a diver.”
Seniors from both Silver Creek and Erie were honored during the meet’s break. Times above are not official as final results were not immediately available.