Sedona Red Rock High School’s swim team took to the home waters for the last time of the season on Thursday, Oct. 17. The Scorpions got plenty of competition, hosting four other schools.
Generally speaking, the SRRHS swimmers held up well. Combining the boys and girls, Sedona defeated three of its four opponents. The Scorpions were on the wrong end of a 135-108 score to St. John Paul, but defeated Winslow 99-97, Scottsdale Christian 93-91 and Cicero Prep 111-43.
“That was a good meet,” Scorpions coach, Dan Morse, said. “We hosted four teams. It’s cool that we get to bring so many different teams up here. People like the view.”
Something that hurt the SRRHS team was the timing of the meet. Because it took place during fall break, both the boys and girls teams featured less depth than usual.
“I think we could have done better,” Zach Dana said. “There were fewer people, but everybody who was here did great.”
While the SRRHS boys were undermanned, they held up relatively well, The boys were narrowly defeated 70-65 by St. John Paul, but beat Cicero Prep 66-24, Scottsdale Christian 64-18 and Winslow 66-33.
The boys had a deep enough roster to have at least one participant in nine of the 11 races. Furthermore, they had the first-place finisher in all but one of them. Cody Brefeld won the 100 and 200 freestyle, Dana won the 200 individual medley and 100 breaststroke and Andrew Tate won the 100 butterfly and the 500 freestyle.
Additionally, Eric Schrader finished second twice, once in the 50 freestyle and again in 100 freestyle behind Brefeld. The quartet of Brefeld, Dana, Tate and Schrader touched the wall first in the 200 and 400 freestyle relays.
“Everybody swam well,” Morse noted. “We’re practicing our race strategies and trying to execute strategies while we’re fatigued. There weren’t really fast times but everybody swam their races correctly and they competed hard.”
The absences hit the Scorpion girls a little harder, as they had only four swimmers — Izzy Constante, Trinity Morgan, Breezy Taylor and Honoka Yabuuchi — at the meet.
Because of that, SRRHS partook in only four of the eight individual girls events and one of the three relays. Taylor gave the Sedona girls their only win of the day when she touched first in the 100 breaststroke while Yabuuchi finished third in the same race.
Taylor, Yabuuchi and Morgan all finished in the top eight in the crowded 100 freestyle, coming in third, fourth and eighth, respectively. Constante finished fourth in both the 50 free and the 100 backstroke, while the quartet teamed to finish third in the 200 freestyle relay.
“We were pretty short-handed on the girls side,” said Constante, who enjoyed the meet despite that fact. “I liked this meet a lot. Everyone seemed pretty close at this meet, seemed to want to cheer each other on.”
Two days later, the SRRHS team partici¬pated in the Small Schools Championships. The boys team finished fourth overall. Freshman Carlos Lattanzi, who was unavailable for the home finale won the Rookie of the Meet Award and set school records in both the 500 freestyle and the 100 breaststroke.
While the swim season is nearing its end, the remainder of the schedule will be quite busy for the SRRHS swimmers. The Scorpions will be on the road on Thursday, Oct. 24, though it won’t be a long trip as they’ll be at the Cottonwood Aquatics Center for a meet against Mingus. After that is another state qualifier in Mesa, followed by the state championships on Thursday, Nov. 7 and Friday, Nov. 8.
“These last three weeks are kind of fast and furious for us,” Morse said. “The goal is to get as many kids into the state meet as possible — that’s goal No. 1. The goal after that is to score as many points as we can at the state meet. I’m hoping to get the boys top five, which would be pretty big since we’re only going to have about six boys going down there. Then we’re hoping to get our girls relays into state and hopefully get them to score some points, as well.”
