Boys' swimming glides through Metros

The boys' swim team finished eighth out of 55 teams at the Washington Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championship (Metros) on Feb 22 and 23. The Blazers boasted a new Blair record in the 200-freestyle relay event with a time of 1:31.13 in preliminaries. The relay team went on to place sixth in finals. This was only one of the team's six finishes in the top ten.

Senior Byron Drumheller met high expectations in the 50-freestyle event, finishing fourth place with a time of 22.14. Drumheller, who was recently named to the All-Gazette team, was also an essential component of the 200-yard free relay and the 200-yard medley relay. The Blazers took sixth in both of these events.

Other key contributors to the relay successes were senior Matt Collogan and junior Ian Mackinnon. Mackinnon placed seventh individually in the 100-yard backstroke final with a time of 52.23, and along with junior teammates David Madej and Andrew Lee and Drumheller, replaced their previously held Blair record of 1:43.85 in the medley-relay with a new time of 1:42.73 in preliminaries.

Collogan posted some of his best times of the season in the 50 and 100-yard freestyle events and expressed satisfaction regarding his personal performance and the performance of the team at Metros. "The Blair boys had one of their strongest showings in a long time," Collogan said. "We got stronger throughout the season and have a lot of depth. It showed," he said.

The girls finished at Metros in a fashion similar to their regular season performance- struggling to place. The team finished in a three-way-tie for 28th place out of 55 competing teams, with a score of 11 points.

Junior Leah Cowdrey and senior Kelly Jacobs were the only two swimmers from the girls' team to qualify for finals. Although Cowdrey expressed disappointment in her personal performance, she was proud to have represented the girls' team at the competition. "It's great that some of us got into finals," she said.

Metros were comprised of both public and private school teams from the Metropolitan region and was preceded by the county meet, which took place on Feb 15 and 16. The boys' team clinched second place at Counties while the boys' and girls' combined score placed fifth overall. This placement qualified the Blazer team to move up to Division I for the 2002-2003 season.

Although the team acknowledges that the Division I competition will be significantly more demanding for both the boys and girls, they are up for the challenge. "Division I will be a lot of competition, but good competition. Hopefully it will push us to work harder and swim faster," Cowdrey said.