GAMBIER — Mount Vernon’s Ian Richardson dominated the boys 500-yard freestyle while Tate Devlin was superb in the girls 100-yard freestyle on Saturday morning at the Kenyon Athletic Center. Their performances helped the Yellow Jackets boys and girls gain a split in their tri-meet against Marysville and Dublin Scioto.
The boys defeated Marysville, 93-76, after losing to Dublin Scioto by the same score. The girls did the opposite, downing Dublin Scioto, 100-63, before Marysville defeated them, 111-59.
Devlin, who scored the only first place for the girls against Marysville — 59:94 in the 100 freestyle, took first in the 100 (59:94) and 50 (27:55) against Dublin Scioto.
Richardson took both the boys 50 (23:18) and 500 (5:09.03) freestyle against Dublin Scioto. He added another first place in the 500 (5:09.03) in the win against Marysville.
Mount Vernon swimming coach Jeff Gottke wasn’t even expecting that much from his arm-weary crew, who are still in the process of building up their endurance for the long haul.
“The yardage is way up, the intensity is way up, so the kids are pretty tired,” said Gottke. “To have a meet in the middle of that, they feel so tired, they think that they can’t swim but it’s good to do that. Also, Dublin (Scioto) and Marysville are good teams.”
Richardson, along with teammate Gavin Rundell, who notched a win in the 200 freestyle (1:59.84), set new PR’s. For Gottke, that was a bonus.
“Overall, I was pleased,” said Gottke. “This meet is more about racing each other than it is about dropping times, so I wanted to see how they would race the other kids, regardless of the time. That’s what I was looking for. I did see some kids dropping time, which is always good. I saw a lot of the racing that I was looking for — we talked about that before the meet. I saw them as they often saw somebody out of the corner of their eye and then go after them and try to beat them.”
Lindsey Studebaker took first in the girls 500 freestyle (6:35.10) against Dublin Scioto, while teammate Samantha Williams won the 100 backstroke (1:13.25). Williams and Devlin teamed up with Kate Klessner and Jess Zeller to win the girls 200 medley relay (2:09.78) against Dublin Scioto. The Jackets picked up another first-place finish in the 400 relay (4:17.62) against Dublin Scioto, swam by Devlin, Studebaker, Klesner and Zeller.
“I knew a little bit about Dublin (Scioto) coming in, so I was able to match their kids up with ours in what I thought would be really good races,” said Gottke.
Additionally, for the Mount Vernon boys, Jack Tokarsky finished first in the 100 backstroke (1:03.78) against the Irish. Johnson Cochran won the 100-yard breaststroke (1:10.78) against Marysville.
Cochran and Rundell combined with Clint Eutsey and Anthony DePascuale to defeat Marysville in the 200-yard relay (1:44.62).
As the Jackets strive toward endurance in their workouts, Gottke takes the speed as a bonus.
“You want to develop endurance and some speed.” said Gottke. “Mostly, you want to increase the distance and the intensity of that distance. It’s a lot of really longer yardage sets with a lot of really fast cycles.”
The training will taper around the end of January, but for now the busy Jackets will face Olentangy on Friday.
”We take it one meet at a time, so they can keep the progression of the season tracked in their minds,” Gottke said.
