Great Bend Post
Big things continue to happen for the Lady Panther swim team. Great Bend placed third out of 11 teams in action Friday in Salina, but a new school record was set in the 200 medley relay, and two more state qualifying times were reached.
The 200-yard medley team of Emilee Hall, Clarise Snapp, Elly Somers, and Josephine Mazouch qualified for state in the first meet of the season and came up three seconds shy of the GBHS record. The girls finished third in Friday's race, but their time of 2:00.81 broke the school record of 2:00.92 set in 2016.
The 400-yard freestyle relay team was flirting with a state qualification time in recent meets. Friday, the team of Mazouch, Somers, Hall, and Kamryn Johns finished third in 4:04.08 to miss the silver by five seconds, but qualify for state by seven seconds.
Somers finished second in the 200-yard IM in 2:30.52. She missed the gold by 12 seconds but qualified for state by 1.08 seconds. Ally Howard swam seventh in the race in 2:50.08. Somers also swam a state consideration time in the 100-yard butterfly with a fifth-place finish in 1:09.17. The qualification time is 1:07.61, and the race featured four state qualifiers.
Hall came in two seconds under state qualification time in the 100-yard backstroke, finishing second in 1:05.71 to miss the gold by four seconds. Hall and Mazouch swam second and third, respectively, behind a state qualifier in the 50-yard freestyle. Hall's time of 27.26, and Mazouch's time of 27.30, come up just shy of the qualification time of 26.83 but are both consideration times. Mazouch missed state qualification in the 100-yard free by just 0.37 seconds with the silver medal in 59.81.
Snapp picked up the lone Panther gold on the day in the 100-yard breast, winning by a quarter of a second in 1:19.61. She easily beat the state consideration time and is less than two seconds from the qualifying mark.
Freshman Braylee Carper finished seventh in the 200-yard free in 2:23.61 to miss the bronze by 10 seconds. That race featured two state qualifiers. The 200-yard free relay team of Snapp, Sydney Kruckenberg, Ellie Lutt, and Alyvia Mingenback placed seventh in 2:05.82 to miss the bronze by seven seconds.