Centaurus outduels Silver Creek for NCAC title
Loads of positive results pour in for Holy Family, Longmont as well
Ear-piercing shrieks and cheers of excitement filled the Broomfield Community Center as the highly anticipated Northern Colorado Athletic Conference girls swim and dive championships went down to the wire.
When all the chips were down in the 400 freestyle relay, an upstart Centaurus Warriors team emerged showing four aces.
Head coach Cort Sharp’s team trailed Silver Creek by a mere three points, 344341, in the team standings through 11 events. That Raptor lead was not big enough, as the all-underclassmen relay team for the Warriors (Ayla Cole, Brayde Patik, Abby Fitzgerald, Virginia Walsh) dominated the race to the tune of a 3 minute, 44.46-second finish — a four-second foursome best. The race gave Centaurus the NCAC championship over Silver Creek by a narrow margin, 381-372.
“Those girls just showed up,” Warrior head coach Cort Sharp said. “They did awesome (in Friday preliminaries), grabbing that first place seeding, which was huge. It’s enormous coming into the race with that kind of confidence and then they showed up and did their thing. They popped off.”
The Warriors needed more than just that 400 free relay result to win. Walsh secured second place in the 50 freestyle (25.36 seconds) and 200 free (1:59.74); Patik and Cole went 3-4 in the 100 backstroke; Kieren Berg was second in the 100 breaststroke (1:11.07) and 500 free (5:35.11); and the 200 free relay of Walsh, Cole, Josie Karr and Fitzgerald also won first place.
As for Debbie Stewart’s Silver Creek team, they were not going to let the last race of the day take away from a very successful league final, despite not having some of the same swims from preliminaries.
“It’s good not to walk away with a meet of this caliber,” Stewart said. “Having the meet close keeps the excitement to the very end. Yesterday , it all looked good, but today was a new day. We had it scored out, but we had a couple of mistakes. We still rose to the occasion and had some great swims and events where we dropped some , but we raised some in other events.”
Seniors Ema Dostal and Lara Martin led the Raptors in the pool. Dostal swam a personal best 2:04.32 in the 200 free, while Martin improved her time in the 100 butterfly to 1:01.63.
As they have all season, the Raptors’ divers found a way to provide the team ample points. Juniors Savannah Wolf and Leslie Broz placed first and second, respectively, outscoring every competitor by at least 50 points. In third, Haley Lindberg pushed the 400-point threshold, as well.
Centaurus and Silver Creek were the top two teams, but they were far from the day’s only big story.
That title belonged to Longmont junior Jordan Bindseil —whose 50 free race was a sight to see. Bindseil broke the meet and pool record in the event (23.89) and then also broke the pool record in the 100 free (52.08) just a bit later. Going into the race already holding the meet record of 24.02, set last year, she wasn’t even looking to break her own record. But instead, she doubled down.
“I wasn’t even thinking about the records,” Bindseil said. “I’m delighted with how my swims went. I was just trying to improve my times and trying to have fun, and I accomplished both of those goals. I’m pleased with how today went.”
As humble as Bindseil was with her record day, she has her sights set on the state championships next week. There, she is hoping for top-10 placement and also hoping to cheer on sophomore teammate Hadley Larson, who on Saturday won the 500 freestyle with a time of 5:31.07.
Holy Family scored 308 points and got a couple of first place performances from freshman standout Lorelai Frauenfelder. The standout swimmer started her day dismantling the field in the 200 individual medley, besting her prelim time by two seconds to come in at 2:10.47. She backed up her race in the IM by setting a personal record and winning the 100 fly (59.06).
For Frauenfelder, her first championship-style high school meet went as well as she had hoped. She put aside her youthfulness and performed to a level she hopes to continue swimming at for years and meets to come.
“It was so much fun,” an enthusiastic Frauenfelder said. “I was looking forward to this meet and excited to come. I know that we always dressed up, which is a fun moment, so I was excited to be part of the team today. I can’t wait for state and just to spend another meet like today with my teammates and hopefully be able to score as many points for them as possible.”