The Manitou Springs girls swim team eased into its season with its first — and potentially only — home dual of the season, losing to Kent Denver 113-47 on Tuesday, Nov. 28.
But the season-opener wasn’t as much about winning as it was getting the girls into a competitive mindset so they can fully take on the challenges that this season, and any swim season, presents early in the year.
It will be a pentathlon – Whitney Nuci
“Starting off with a home meet was the best thing we could have done for the team as it stands this year,” coach Whitney Nuci said. “The new girls were able to feel out what a meet looks like, what a meet feels like and experience all of the high tensions that can happen with it.”
The Mustangs turned in some encouraging results. Selah Combs won the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 2 minutes, 19.23 seconds, then went 1:12.49 in the 100 butterfly.
With eight swimmers competing in the event, Natalie Traenkle took second in the 50 freestyle at 33.51.
For the first competition of the year, the results were encouraging as the team prepares for its first big meet of the season.
“It showed that the hard work they’re putting in during practice is paying off,” Nucci said. “We had new girls who just learned, for example, how to do the breaststroke last week and they were able to be competitive with it.”
The meet also marked the return of diving for the Mustangs. Rhys Parratt took third in the event with a score of 129.25.
The Mustangs head to Fort Collins this weekend for a pentathlon meet at EPIC. This will be the season’s first big-meet experience for the Mustangs and a good chance to measure their progression through the first few weeks of practice.
“The meet this weekend is going to give good insight to those new girls because it will be a pentathlon and not a normal-style meet,” Nuci said. “It’ll be more low-key.”
The Mustangs will compete in five events at EPIC: the 50 freestyle, 50 backstroke, 50 fly, 50 breast and 100 individual medley.
This will give the team another chance to ease into high-level competition before they head to Berthoud next weekend.
The Manitou Springs boys cross-country team went to Mesa, Ariz., for one last hurrah before getting ready for track season in the spring.
The Mustangs competed at the NXR Southwest Regional meet and claimed the team win, beating out other Colorado schools such as Peak to Peak, Golden View Classical Academy, Jefferson Academy, Woodland Park and Salida.
“It’s the finish that the boys deserved,” coach Andy Sherwood said. “It’s hard to get five guys to all have their best race in the same day and we came really close to that down in Arizona.”
in October. – Bulletin file photo
The race was highlighted by a third-place finish from Cody Wyman, who crossed the finish line in 15 minutes, 57.51 seconds. Cody Kelley was sixth at 16:12.07. Both runners ran onto the podium at state cross-country, with Kelley taking second place.
But the one thing that held true then and held true in Arizona is that this group ran with team goals in mind.
“The big thing is that we proved something to ourselves,” Cody Kelley said. “We didn’t have the day that we wanted to at state and we really turned that round. We looked at that as a team victory and that was big for us going into track.”
With good reason. In his years as Manitou’s coach, Sherwood has seen the team truly develop in the period between the cross-country and track seasons. He can think back to when Wyman and Kelley were freshmen and how they’ve grown in the offseason gaps. He’s almost giddy when thinking about the spring season starting, and the runners feel the same way.
“They’re very excited to get into the track season and see how much of a jump we take,” Sherwood said. “We almost make our biggest jumps in the winter going into the track season. They know that now and they’re expecting it.”
Mustangs Bennett Gauvin took 24th in Arizona, Connor Cassidy took 79th and Yonas Hanson took 89th. The five combined scores gave the Mustangs a team score of 16, tops among the 43 affiliated teams competing at the race.
Ahead of the spring track season, the Mustangs are on their own from a training standpoint, but aren’t letting any training opportunity slip away from them.
“I saw Cody (Kelley) and Yonas going out for a run when I got to the school,” Sherwood said.
This was at a point of the day when the sun was down and the temperatures were sliding into the low 30s. But it didn’t matter for a couple of athletes who wanted to seize every chance to get better at their craft.