From losing swim caps and goggles to getting new personal bests, the Manhattan High swim team beat the odds and finished first with 362 points at their last meet before the Manhattan Invitational. 

“Unlike last week’s meet it was actually a close meet,” captain Egan Dritz, senior, said. “We had some really tough competition in Washburn Rural and seemed to peak.” 

Dritz swam in the 200-IM for the first time this year, along with sophomore Sam Ungerer, while competing in his usual races.  

“I was really happy with our results overall,” Dritz said. 

The swimmers stepped up to the challenge when the point totals were announced before the last heat of the 12th event (400 freestyle relay).  The Indians were only ahead of WaRu by 26 points and losing the race would have cost them the meet. Luckily the 400 A team consisting of seniors Brandon Speilman, Xander Say — both captains along with Dritz — and juniors Chris Bedros, Igor Sheshukov, reigned in the win by finishing first in their heat and were greeted by the cheers of their teammates, friends and parents. 

Freshman Mitchel Bunger also helped the 200 free relay finish strong by dropping his time in his leg of the race to get a new PR along with captain Chris Chae, senior, who set a new personal best of 1:01.69 in the 100-yard butterfly.  

With swim doing so well, it’s only fitting diving matched their success as sophomore Zeke Kohl took second overall with 224.35 points. 

Now that the team has a win under their belts they’re taking a confident leap into their hardest weeks of practice before the invite in a week. 

“We’ll have our toughest training week of the year,” Dritz said. “Friday we’ll be doing hundred hundreds or 10,000 yards… that is really meant to break the team down and not only mentally but physically too. The week after that we have an Invite, which for quite a few of our swimmers is our championship meet.” 

After the tough week the team will begin their tapper of the year and work on speed and less yardage in practice and always looking at improving. 

“Just [working on] the problems that coach Alex [Brown] has highlighted in the past,” Dritz said. “Breathing in and out of walls, and I noticed we had some really not bad turns but not necessarily a great turn so that’s something that coming in the next two weeks we’ll try really hard to focus on.”