Manhattan High Girls Swim has opened their season with three podium finishes. At the Topeka High Invitational on March 26, MHS secured gold and scored 677 points, well above second-place Junction City’s score of 454. At the Lansing Relays Invitational on March 28, Manhattan placed second, falling to the host Lansing. At the Emporia Invitational on March 31, the Indians placed second once again, behind Lawrence Free State and ahead of Lawrence High.
Following a week-long break, Manhattan High hopes to continue their momentum into a pivotal stretch of the season. On April 9, the Indians head to Salina. Just two days later, on April 11, MHS will face their toughest test of the season — the Kapaun Invitational. Kapaun is the biggest meet all year and is Varsity only, allowing for Manhattan to gauge their potential performance in the postseason. Similarly, the Topeka West Invite on April 14 consists entirely of league schools, a pivotal meet if MHS wants to defend their Centennial title.
“Kapaun is a really big meet,” junior Delaney Saucier said. “There’s a lot of prep schools and a lot of rich kids that go there, so it’s kind of stressful. But our Varsity swimmers, we’ve been working really hard. We have two practices a day sometimes, so we’ll do weights and then swim. Just a lot of weight training and a lot of practice in the pool.”
With the start of the new season comes rust, something that Manhattan has effectively been able to shake off.
“We don’t have a lot of people that do off-season, year round swimming, so a lot of people are coming in not in swimming shape, so we’ve been trying to get everybody back into shape the first couple of weeks,” head coach Alex Brown said. “However, we’ve beat the teams that we expected our team to be able to beat. And then at Lansing, there was one school that we were not sure we were going to beat, and ended up beating anyways.”
Topeka High has been the standout meet of the season. The Indians blew out the competition even with multiple swimmers competing in events that weren’t their usual.
“Well, several of the teams that were there [Topeka High] were really small, like they don’t have enough people to fill all the events,” Brown said. “At most swim meets, you can score your top three individuals and top two relays. On top of that, we swam really well. But it really just comes down to we had the depth to fill everything and do it in a way that we’re not having a lot of disqualifications.”
For Saucier, this season hasn’t been standout just because of the results.
“I think our community this year is just really fun, and I think Coach Alex and the girls, we all try to push each other and go our fastest,” Saucier said. “And practice is just really fun, and it’s just really encouraging at meets. It’s just really great to be surrounded by a community that supports you.”
