Swimming: Silver Creek off to good start

The Silver Creek boys swim team has passed the quarter-pole of its 2017 season, with some goals already accomplished and others still outstanding.

The Raptors’ meet record for the season stands at 2-1, with a win over Longmont (122-63) and a close loss at Thompson Valley (92-88) before spring break, followed by a solid victory over Mountain View (126-57) April 6.

Silver Creek also finished in 13th place at the Dick Rush Memorial Invitational before the break, swimming in competition against 46 teams from across both the 5A and 4A state divisions.

Coach Debbie Stewart said that the team’s goal is to place twenty individual qualifiers into the state championships. With thirteen state-qualifying times thus far, the Raptors are more than halfway there.

The most recent to join the qualifiers-party, coming out of last Thursday’s win over Mountain View, were Weston Call (fr.) at 1:02.3 in the 100 m backstroke, and diver Ben Willet (jr.) with 192.35 points with a combined 11.4 degree of difficulty in the one-meter springboard. Some of those not there yet, but getting closer, include Matthew Teta (so.) in diving, Noah Simon (jr.) in the 200 m freestyle, and freshman Dakota Casey, who fell just three seconds short in the 500 m freestyle, and .3 seconds short in the 100 m freestyle.

Stewart, who at the outset of the season called this, “kind of a rebuilding year” for the program, said that the recent narrow defeat against conference rival Thompson Valley was “a little bit of an eye-opener for us.” She explained, “It let us know we can’t just sit back, that we’re going to have to keep working pretty hard to get where we want to go.”

Next up on the schedule is a home triangular meet on Thursday, April 13th against conference opponents Valley and Estes Park.