Submitted by Daniel Briggs, head boys'/assistant girls' swimming:

We had a very strong showing in the district meet last night at Southeast Polk as a team. We had improvements in nearly every race by every swimmer.

The meet started off very fast as we were the district champions last year in the medley relay and we broke our own school record by nearly a full second and ended up third.

Garrett Rowe started us off with a very fast leg in the backstroke, nearly 1.5 seconds faster than his best time of the season, Jordan Reinard got us into the lead and Colin Murphy had a great leg in the fly and then it was a shootout at the end with Ian Murphy anchoring.

Sophomore Sam Weyers had a great showing in the 200 free and 500 free, setting new school records with a 1:52.50 and dropped 14 seconds, setting the new mark at 5:05.53, just missing the cut in each race by less than 2 seconds.

Junior Jordan Reinard had record-breaking performances in both the 200 IM and 100 breaststroke, setting not only school records, but pool records, as well. His 1:58.09 and :59.80 were both huge goals this year to break the 2:00 and 1:00 barriers. He has landed some very strong seeds at state being fourth and third, respectively, in each. Being the second-place finisher in the district in the breaststroke spoke volumes of the talent level this meet contained with the Ankeny and Valley teams.

The Murphy Brothers, Colin and Ian, both attained individual goals by qualifying in the 100 butterfly (Colin) and 100 free (Ian). Both had significant time drops to attain the 23rd and T-17th seeds in the state meet.

Of all these races the most exciting relay to get into state was the 400 freestyle relay as this group of guys missed the mark last year by only .14 seconds. The guys set a new school record by nearly 2 full seconds at 3:24.47 (Ian Murphy, J.T. Trible, Garrett Rowe, Jordan Reinard).

The only take back of the meet would be the 200 free relay that was disqualified. The foursome had established a new record by nearly 2 full seconds under the previous school record pace, only to see it taken away. The guys really rallied and finished off the meet strong after this occurred and without this relay scored our highest number of power points in the school's short existence (1174).

We were disappointed about the relay as our power point totals would have been more around the 1400 mark, but that is nothing to take away from the great times we swam headed into the state meet. Any time you get state qualifiers, it is easy to become greedy and want more, but we are very thankful to have the opportunity to be able to compete this Saturday at the Marshalltown in the state meet with our six events that advanced.

Great season to all of the guys finishing 6-3 in dual meets and winning two invitational meets. Lots of time drops and a large portion of the team returning again for next year's squad.