Sports : Viking swimmers have 'best' performance at WaHawk Relays

We swam really well Saturday at the Wahawk Relays. This is a large, and very competitive, meet with an unusual format where nearly every event is set up as a relay. There were 8 schools and more than 190 athletes participating to include Cedar Falls, Iowa City West, Linn-Mar, Waterloo East, Waterloo West, Decorah, Newton and the Vikings. These are all pretty good swim teams but Cedar Falls appears to clearly be the best team in the state by far; they are exceptionally talented and deep.

Despite the tough competition, our guys came through with their best performance of the year. Our “A” 400 Free Relay Team of John Levis, Matt Pettengill, Rico Carneiro and Brandon Tharp won the bronze medal for third place (out of 23 teams). Tharp and Carneiro teamed up on the 100 Breast Relay to also capture the bronze medal against 18 teams. Receiving ribbons were Tharp and Levis who placed 5th in the 200 Individual Medley Relay and our “A” 200 Medley Relay Team of Carneiro, Tharp, Levis and Pettengill that finished 7th out of more than 30 teams. Four of the six teams that beat us in this event were from Cedar Falls; that is how amazingly good that team is.

During the meet the guys achieved 23 new personal best times. It is really great to see these guys being rewarded for all of the hard work they have been putting in. We have guys like Matt Pettengill, Alvin Long, Wes Lyons and Andy Newcomb, just to name a few, who have been making significant time drops in nearly every event over the past several meets. Those guys in particular, and the team in general, have been focused and working hard and it really shows at the meets.

Our next meet is Tuesday night at Grinnell. Then we are back up in Waterloo again on the 13th against East and Decorah.

Saturday’s complete results:

200 Medley Relay A 7th 1:53.81 Rico Carneiro, Brandon Tharp, John Levis, Matt Pettengill

B 20th 2:11.13 Tyler Naughton, Sean Dulin, Josh Yerkes, Wes Lyons

B 25th 2:28.21 Nick Gardner, Alvin Long, Drake Tilson, Andy Newcomb

200 Individual Medley Relay

A 5th 2:06.89 Levis, Tharp

B 10th 2:12.65 Carneiro, Pettengill

50 Free

25th 27.93 Lyons

52nd 31.63 Naughton

67th 35.42 Newcomb

100 Butterfly Relay

A 9th 58.43 Levis, Yerkes

100 Free 13th 1:00.85 Dulin

42nd 1:16.38 Long

500 Free Relay A 11th 6:38.04 Tilson, Gardner, Naughton

200 Free Relay A 9th 1:45.92 Pettengill, Lyons, Dulin, Yerkes

100 Back Relay A 9th 1:05.81 Yerkes, Dulin

B 15th 1:17.66 Newcomb, Naughton

C 17th 1:19.90 Gardner, Tilson

100 Breast Relay A 3rd 1:01.80 Carneiro, Tharp

B 14th 1:15.44 Long, Lyons

400 Free Relay A 3rd 3:47.29 Levis, Pettengill, Carneiro, Tharp

B 21st 5:16.53 Gardner, Newcom, Tilson, Long