The records started falling a week early for the Franklin boys swimming & diving sectional.
That the Grizzly Cubs won their fifth straight sectional title Saturday, comfortably outpointing runner-up Center Grove 465 to 321.5, wasn’t surprising. Some of the numbers put up in the process were — sometimes even to those putting them up.
Sophomore diver Gauge Creech, for instance, went into the day just trying to beat his previous 11-dive best. But his final score of 463.35 was high enough to beat a school record that had stood since 1976.
“I wasn’t going for it today,” Creech said. “I was just trying to break my personal record, which was 392, I believe. I was just trying to beat my old record.
“I’ve just been practicing a lot recently, working on all my dives, and it paid off.”
Classmate Griffin Edwards also turned some heads by breaking two other long-standing school marks. He posted a winning time of 1:54.15 in the 200-yard individual medley and later swam the 100 backstroke in 52.49 seconds.
“Prelims was just kind of get warmed up, see what I could do,” Edwards said, “and today I surprised myself and broke some records, so it was a good day.”
Also winning individual sectional titles for the Grizzly Cubs were sophomore Jacob Destrampe (200 and 500 freestyle) and junior Michael Couet (100 breaststroke). In addition, Franklin claimed first in all three relays to advance those teams to the state meet.
Center Grove’s Noah Tallman also had a strong afternoon. He won a sectional title in the 100 butterfly and also posted a state cut time of 4 minutes, 40.77 seconds in the 500 freestyle, finishing just behind Destrampe.
The senior said he benefited from having some high-quality competition.
“I’ve always been a swimmer, and athlete in general, that does better whenever I’m pushed,” Tallman said. “I don’t swim as well on my own. It was fun racing (Destrampe); he did a good job. I’ll see what I can do at state, though.”
On Sunday, Center Grove learned that both its 200 and 400 freestyle relay teams had received at-large callbacks for the state meet.
Indian Creek’s 400 free relay, which set a school record Saturday at 3:20.19, just missed, but the Braves will be represented by Tucker Brock in the 100 butterfly.
Also earning a callback was Franklin senior Aaron Lamm, who is state bound in the 200 free.
Whiteland diver Collin Barton earned a spot in Tuesday’s diving regional at Bloomington North. His fourth-place finish on the 1-meter board Saturday helped the Warriors to a strong third-place team finish (278 points).
Indian Creek was sixth with 210 points, while Greenwood was ninth with 97.5.
Franklin can now turn its attention to next weekend’s state meet, where it hopes to compete for a top-10 finish.
For a moment, though, head coach Zach DeWitt allowed himself to enjoy the new marks his young swimmers established at the sectional.
“I think the coolest part about that is just how long those records have been in our program,” he said, noting that both of the old standards Edwards broke had held up for 20 years. “I don’t know if that was necessarily our goal at the beginning of the day, but certainly fun prizes to take home along the way.”
DeWitt and his crew are hoping there are bigger prizes to take home this week.
