On Friday, November 5, the Crystal Lake High School swimming girls emerged from the locker room with one goal in mind: beating Jacobs at JV Conference.
As the first relay stepped up to the blocks, the team had a feeling they were going to win. The PR girls in this relay were Katy Fritz, Maddy Loch, and Elizabeth Peroni. The relay came in 2nd place and set a great tone for the rest of the meet.
As CLHS and Jacobs battled for first, it came down to the final relay of the night: the 400 freestyle relay. With CLHS only a few points ahead, Maddy Loch (PR), Erin Howe (CLC), Katie Schendel (CLS), and Elizabeth Peroni (PR) all swam their best times in the heat of the competition. The CLHS JV team was victorious, creating a great start for the weekend.
At Varsity conference the next day, CLHS was prepared for the tough competition about to come, especially from Jacobs and Cary-Grove. Every girl on the team brought her best. Two girls from PR who especially did an outstanding job were Courtney Lefevre
and Marisa Barton.
Marisa received a gold medal in the 50 free and 100 free and got state times for both events. Marisa was also voted MVP for the meet by the coaches.
Courtney also had an amazing conference meet. She got a 2:06 for the 200 free, which was a best time until the next weekend.
Courtney and Marisa were also in the 200 and 400 free relays with Jess Schwendau (CLS) and Nikayla Dahl (CLS). Both relay teams swam their hardest and they got first place in both events. Also, both of the relays were close to the state cut, so they worked extremely hard for the sectionals meet the next weekend.
Right before the last event, the team scores were announced, and the girls of CLHS were ecstatic to hear that they were ahead of Jacobs by three points! The 400 free relay worked hard to keep their place ahead of Jacobs. The CLHS Varsity team won the meet, and remained undefeated for the season.
At the IHSA Sectionals meet on Saturday, November 12, four swimmers were hoping to get a state time for four different events. In the 2nd event of the meet, Courtney LeFevre swam an amazing 200 free and received her best time of a 2:02. She beat her previous time at Conference by four seconds!
A few events later was the anticipated 50 freestyle event. Marisa Barton was seated first and prepared to swim her hardest for a state time. Marisa swam her best time for that event as well as for the 100 free, in which she also swam a state cut.
All of the Varsity swimmers had a great meet, and came in 4th place at Sectionals!
At the ISHA State meet the next weekend, the Crystal Lake girls had fantastic races. The 200 freestyle relay came in 29th place overall and had a time of 1:39.8! There were over 200 teams at the state swim meet on Friday and Saturday November 18 and 19, so what they accomplished is incredible.
Marisa Barton also had amazing races for her 50 and 100 freestyles. She swam a time of 53:25 in the the 100 free and came in 27th place! During the Preliminaries on Friday, she swam a 24:4 for the 50 freestyle, and got fourth place. Because of her phenomenal time, she qualified to swim in the State finals the next day. She was seated 4th, but after she swam a time of 23:97 she did better than her seed time and placed 3rd in the state! The girls on the Crystal Lake High School swim team had a great season!