T. Whetstone, Pioneer’s Kitchell, Brooke also qualify for finals
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Marcus Smith Isaac Whetstone Tucker Whetstone
WARSAW — Despite illness raging through the Tippecanoe Valley boys swimming team, seniors Marcus Smith and Isaac Whetstone are on target to once again qualify for the IHSAA state finals.
Smith qualified first in both the 100 butterfly and 100 backstroke at the Warsaw sectional preliminaries Thursday. Whetstone qualified first in the 200 freestyle and second in the 100 freestyle.
Smith and Whetstone also form half of Valley’s 200 freestyle and 400 freestyle relay teams which qualified first along with Tucker Whetstone and Aaden Bowers.
“He and Marcus both have battled some illness, so we were kind of testing the waters a little bit,” Valley coach Scott Whetstone said. “I think they will be ready to go on Saturday. It will be good. It will be some good races.”
Throw in Tucker Whetstone qualifying fourth in the butterfly and 10th in the 50 freestyle and Bowers, who qualified 13th in the 50 freestyle, and Valley, though they consist of just six swimmers, would appear to be poised to duplicate, if not improve upon, last year’s third-place team finish.
“It’s been a crazy week,” coach Whetstone added, noting that Tucker Whetstone had recently overcome a migraine headache. “We were like on plan C, D, E. You want to get here and know what you’re doing, but it’s been a rough week. But they swam well.”
Valley won the 200 medley and 400 freestyle relays at last year’s sectional. Their 400 freestyle relay time of 3:14.19 broke the school and sectional records.
Valley decided to drop the medley relay this time and instead focus on the freestyle relays.
“Warsaw and Culver (Academy), they have enough swimmers that they didn’t have to put in their best tonight,” coach Whetstone said. “So we know they’re both going to be there in the 200 free (relay). The 400 free, I think Warsaw’s going to be our biggest competition in that. We’ve definitely got to dial in, and they’re going to have to pick up the pace obviously.”
Pioneer seniors Ian Kitchell and Austin Brooke also qualified in two individual event finals apiece. Kitchell qualified third in the 50 freestyle in 22.81 seconds while Brooke qualified sixth in 23.08. Kitchell also advanced to the final in the 100 freestyle in 50.47 seconds, where he qualified fourth. Brooke qualified sixth in the 100 breaststroke in 1:06.56.
Pioneer also qualified fifth in the 200 medley relay, sixth in the 200 freestyle relay and ninth in the 400 freestyle relay.
Kitchell and Brooke also swam the 200 medley relay along with Tayt Smith and Jake Felker. Eli Hines, Hunter Bartling and Luke Ulery joined Felker on the finals-bound 200 freestyle relay.
Freshman Eli Hines qualified 13th in the 100 backstroke and will be in the consolation race. Hines also will be an alternate in the 200 freestyle.
Fletcher Smith also advanced to the consolation race in the 500 freestyle, Tayt Smith advanced to the consolation race in the 100 backstroke, and Bartling advanced to the consolation race in the 100 breaststroke.
No Rochester swimmer advanced to a sectional final.
Reece Johnson, the team’s lone senior, advanced to the consolation final in both the 200 individual medley, where he shaved over two seconds off his seed time and qualified 10th in 2:27.02; and the 100 backstroke, where he qualified 11th in 1:09.57.
“He took some time off in the backstroke and a little bit of time in the IM from a season PR, not a lifetime PR, so hopefully, he’ll shave off a little more time Saturday,” Rochester coach Stephanie Brown said. “He also had two good relay splits. … Reece had a good night, and he’s excited to come back and swim four events.”
Sophomore Brevin Nicholson will swim in both distance events Saturday after swimming a 2:15.46 in the 200 freestyle and qualifying 15th and swimming a 6:11.79 in the 500 freestyle and qualifying 13th.
“Brevin can kind of do everything, and with only five boys, the boys that have experience, I kind of ask them what do you want to swim,” Brown said. “We kind of look at results from the last couple years. What do you have your best shot of making it back in? So that was how Brevin picked his events.”
Junior Grant Bailey set a personal record in the 100 freestyle in 1:00.09 and qualified 15th.
The only sectional final race that will feature a Zebra is the 200 freestyle relay, which qualified seventh in 1:54.42. The team consists of Nicholson, Bailey, Tanner Hamilton and Johnson.
Rochester also qualified 10th in the 400 freestyle relay.
Brown said the five boys on the team, including Hamilton and Josh Seuferer, dropped 42 seconds total off their previous best times.
“That’s a pretty big deal,” Brown said. “Proud of them.”
Swimming notes
Johnson and Ava Thomas, the lone senior on the Rochester girls swimming team, will be recognized at halftime of Friday’s home boys basketball game against Peru. The team did not have any home meets this year due to renovations of the Rochester Middle School pool, so it was decided to move senior night to halftime of a basketball game. Senior members of the choir, band and cheerleading squad will also be recognized at halftime. The senior basketball players – Bryce Baugher, Drew Bowers, Owen Prater, Tanner Reinartz and Xavier Vance – will be recognized in between the JV and varsity games.
The state qualifying standard for the 100 butterfly is 50.96 seconds, a mark Smith bettered in the preliminaries. Smith, the RTC swimmer of the year in 2022 and 2023, won this event as a freshman at the 2022 sectional but chose not to swim it in 2023 and 2024. He is the three-time defending sectional champion in the 200 individual medley but chose to skip it this year and focus on the butterfly, the backstroke and the relays.
“That was kind of a hard decision,” coach Whetstone explained. “He has quite a few events he could have done. We even talked about the 50 free at one point because he’s fast enough in that. He took a couple weeks, and we sat down and decided he swam the fly his freshman year, he did really well and went back to the fly and decided to go fly and back this year. So it’s kind of on him. And then he gets the two relay swims to get a 50 time and a 100 time to get out there for colleges to look at too. So that was the goal. Get some other looks in other events.”
Doors open at 7 a.m. Saturday at Warsaw for diving preliminaries. Diving starts at 9:30 a.m. Swimming and diving finals start at 1 p.m. Admission is $7.
WARSAW BOYS SWIMMING SECTIONAL PRELIMINARIES
Those qualifying in the top eight advance to sectional finals; those qualifying 9th-16th advance to the consolation finals; those qualifying 17th-18th are alternates
Top qualifiers plus all Rochester, Valley and Pioneer results
200 MEDLEY RELAY
1. Culver Academy – 1:41.98, 5. Pioneer (Tayt Smith, Ian Kitchell, Austin Brooke, Jake Felker) – 1:55.43 (finals)
200 FREESTYLE
1. Isaac Whetstone (TV) – 1:49.94, 15. Brevin Nicholson (RHS) – 2:15.46 (consolation), 17. Eli Hines (PIO) – 2:18.89 (alternate)
Did not advance
19. Fletcher Smith (PIO) – 2:21.54
200 INDIVIDUAL MEDLEY
1. Turner (CMA) – 2:08.13, 10. Reece Johnson (RHS) – 2:27.02 (consolation)
50 FREESTYLE
1. MacDonald (CMA) – 22.05 seconds, 3. Ian Kitchell (PIO) – 22.81 (finals), 6. Austin Brooke (PIO) – 23.08 (finals), 10. Tucker Whetstone (TV) – 23.79 (consolation), 13. Aaden Bowers (TV) – 24.49 (consolation)
Did not advance
20. Grant Bailey (RHS) – 26.77, 23. Jake Felker (PIO) – 27.84, 27. Tanner Hamilton (RHS) – 32.49, 28. Michael Leininger (TV) – 36.57, 29. Joshua Seuferer (RHS) – 37.25
100 BUTTERFLY
1. Marcus Smith (TV) – 50.39 seconds, 4. Tucker Whetstone (TV) – 55.15 (finals)
100 FREESTYLE
1. Collins (CMA) – 48.82 seconds, 2. Isaac Whetstone (TV) – 49.23 (finals), 4. Ian Kitchell (PIO) – 50.47 (finals), 15. Grant Bailey (RHS) – 1:00.09 (consolation)
Did not advance
22. Luke Ulery (PIO) – 1:09.45, 23. Landen Johnson (PIO) – 1:10.93, 26. Tanner Hamilton (RHS) – 1:18.40, 28. Michael Leininger (TV) – 1:32.49
500 FREESTYLE
1. Neary (CMA) – 5:13.45, 13. Brevin Nicholson (RHS) – 6:11.79 (consolation), 16. Fletcher Smith (PIO) – 6:32.97 (consolation)
200 FREESTYLE RELAY
1. Valley (Marcus Smith, Tucker Whetstone, Aaden Bowers, Isaac Whetstone) – 1:31.46, 6. Pioneer (Eli Hines, Hunter Bartling, Luke Ulery, Jake Felker) – 1:54.29 (finals), 7. Rochester (Brevin Nicholson, Grant Bailey, Tanner Hamilton, Reece Johnson) – 1:54.42 (finals)
100 BACKSTROKE
1. Marcus Smith (TV) – 53.85 seconds, 11. Reece Johnson (RHS) – 1:09.57 (consolation), 13. Eli Hines (PIO) – 1:13.57 (consolation), 16. Tayt Smith (PIO) – 1:18.22 (consolation)
Did not advance
22. Joshua Seuferer (RHS) – 1:40.11
100 BREASTSTROKE
1. Stauffer (PLY) – 1:00.36, 6. Austin Brooke (PIO) – 1:06.56 (finals), 16. Hunter Bartling (PIO) – 1:17.64 (consolation)
400 FREESTYLE RELAY
1. Valley (Isaac Whetstone, Tucker Whetstone, Aaden Bowers, Marcus Smith) – 3:24.97, 9. Pioneer (Ian Kitchell, Eli Hines, Jake Felker, Austin Brooke) – 3:55.38 (consolation), 10. Rochester (Brevin Nicholson, Grant Bailey, Tanner Hamilton, Reece Johnson) – 4:19.12 (consolation)
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