By Wendi Reardon Price
Staff Writer
wprice@mihomepaper.com
INDEPENDENCE TWP. — The Clarkston Girls Swim and Dive team is preparing for the OAA Blue League meet this week.
“We have some tough competition going into the meet,” said Melissa Hesse, head coach. “We have Rochester and Troy who are really tough. Our closest competition will be Oxford. Our girls are getting much faster so hopefully we can battle it out with Oxford and hold onto third or fourth place in the league.”
The Wolves went 7-2 in the league with Rochester and Troy being the only losses.
“They are just way ahead,” Hesse said about the two teams. “They have so many fast kids.”
Hesse added the team has been doing great.
“The last few meets have been huge drops,” she said, adding Tyler Craig dropped 11 seconds in the 200-yard freestyle events. Also, Gwen Brumbaugh dropped 21 seconds in the 500-yard freestyle event one week and another three seconds in the last meet.
“We have a lot of girls who are dropping a lot of time,” she said. “I am excited to see how much time they will drop in the league meet. We started tapering last week and they are having fun with tapering. Hopefully they will be ready to go.”
Hesse shared a goal for the league meet is to continue to drop in time and to have fun.
“We are not in the position to go after the title this year so my main goal is they each drop time and have fun together as a team. I am excited to see how they do,” she said.
Hesse shared seniors have helped out during her first year at the helm as head coach including Bayla Zarzycki, Ella Kurmaniak and Olivia Booker.
“We have some strong seniors who are leading the way,” she said. “Bayla has done an amazing job with taking over and leading. She stepped in and said this is what we are doing. Ella is also doing an amazing job. She’s been a great leader especially in the water. The seniors have really helped a lot this year by showing me what happened in the past and what their traditions are. I am super thankful for the seniors. Bayla and Ella really took over. Olivia has done a really great job of continuing to come to practice and work hard.”
The Wolves head to the OAA Blue League preliminaries is Wednesday and Thursday with the championship on Friday. The competition begins at 5:30 p.m. each day at Oxford High School.

  Clarkston Athletics, Girls Swim and Dive