Elgin swims to victory in five-team meet

LAWTON — Elgin’s girls’ team swam to victory last week in a five-team meet with key wins in two relay events that pushed them over the top.

The Lady Owls won the 200-yard freestyle relay and the 400-yard freestyle relay with a two-second victory in the 400 over Lawton Eisenhower. Elgin’s team swam the 400-yard freestyle in 4:54.28 while Eisenhower was runner-up with a time of 4:56.51. Team members are Ellie Stevenson, Persaus Martinez, Amira Papp-Cservenak and Kylie Delozier.

Elgin won the 200-yard freestyle race by more than four seconds over second-place finisher Eisenhower.

The two relay wins were even sweeter since Elgin’s swimmers had not been able to practice for several days because of repairs to its pool.

“We’d only been back in the pool for about a week,” Elgin head coach Corey Grochow said. “We were a little nervous about going into this meet but we’re after we performed, we’re excited about the (upcoming) championship season.”

As a team, Elgin finished with 134 points followed by Putnam City with 88 and Eisenhower with 69.

The Lady Owls did not win any other races but finished second in several, including the 200-yard medley relay and the 200-yard intermediate medley where Camryn Parker swam a time of 3:57.25. Stevenson also finished as runner-up in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 1:19.50.

Elgin’s next competition will be Jan. 20 at the Area Championships with Lawton High serving as the host school at Cameron University. Teams included in the meet are all Lawton schools, Altus, Marlow and Duncan. The Suburban Conference meet will be held a week later at Harrah High School.

The Class 5A Regional meet will be held Feb. 4 at Mitch Park YMCA in Edmond and will determine which Elgin swimmers advance to the state meet on Feb. 17-19. The top 24 swimmers in each event will make their way to the state meet.

Boys finish second

The Owls failed to win an event but had a solid showing including a second-place finish from Mason Thompson in the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 2:15.51, a runner-up position by Murdoc Bradley in the 200-yard intermediate medley (3:06.72) and a third-place finish by Ben Schulke in the same event (3:34.50). Bradley also finished second in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 7:06.55.

Meanwhile, Noah Bronkema finished second in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 26.17 while Thompson was third in the 100-yard butterfly with a time of 1:14.15. 

Elgin finished second in the 400-yard freestyle relay with a time of 4:14.11. Team members are Thompson, Bradley, Hunter Monostori and Bronkema.

As a team, Elgin finished second in the meet with 128 points. Lawton MacArthur was the meet champ with 154 points.