If there one thing that the Manitou Springs girls swim team is not afraid of, it’s measuring itself against some of the top teams in the state. Each year, heading into the holiday break, the Cheyenne Mountain Invite is the best place to make that measurement.
The results weren’t what the Mustangs were hoping to see, but the evaluation should encourage them to keep working hard so they can thrive in competition against a more level playing field.
Manitou took 16th place in the team standings out of 22 teams competing at the event. In terms of individual efforts, only Selah Combs and Summer Tenpas swam their way into finals. Combs got into the 100-yard freestyle finals and Tenpas got into the 100 butterfly finals.
Combs’ time of 59.69 seconds was good for 15th in her event; Tenpas finished the butterfly in 1 minute, 5.32 seconds to finish 16th.
The Mustangs also got into finals in all three relay races, with the best finish coming in the 400-freestyle relay where they finished 10th.
The finishes of those five events is what gave the Mustangs enough team points to finish ahead of six teams at the invitational.
As is the case every year, however, the Cheyenne Mountain Invite usually has teams from big schools and swimmers from big schools sitting atop the leaderboards. The Mustangs may not have come away from the event with a lot of hardware, but the experience of competing against high-level swimmers from big programs will likely benefit them later in the season.