Franklin swimming coach Zach DeWitt often talks about teams having limited “emotional dollars” to spend over the course of a season, and his top swimmers spent a lot at the OLY Wintere Invite, a high-profile club meet in Elkhart, during the weekend ahead of Saturday’s Johnson County meet at Indian Creek.
Faced with the challenge of winning back the county championship that Center Grove took from them last year, the Grizzly Cub boys managed to dig in the couch and scrounge up a few extra bucks.
Fueled by two county records each from Mac Ratzlaff and Cade Oliver, Franklin was able to outscore the Trojans 513.5 to 461 and reclaim the crown. Greenwood (297) was a distant third, followed by Indian Creek (283.5).
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“We just carried all that — I don’t want to say frustration, but we wanted to win more than they did,” Ratzlaff said. “It just meant more to us in the moment.”
Oliver also found some extra motivation from a couple of close losses to Zionsville standout Will Modglin at the OLY meet.
“Last week, I wasn’t very happy with some of my swims,” he said. “I got out-touched twice, and that made me angry, so this past week I’ve been working really hard trying to get where I need to be in February — so this is just a start to what I need to be later on.”
On the girls side, the Grizzly Cubs also faced a challenge from Center Grove but picked up their sixth consecutive title. Franklin totaled 509 points to the Trojans’ 469. Greenwood (334) edged Whiteland (325) for third.
Because of the timing of the meet, hardly any team ever comes into it in peak form, but DeWitt liked how his swimmers were able to push through their fatigue and perform well enough to win.
“The theme of the week was, we want to be the most disciplined team here,” he said. “We wanted to be the team that breathes the least in the last 25 … that’s what we were looking for.”
The Grizzly Cub boys turned the tables on the Trojans in the 200-yard medley relay, rallying for a narrow win after Center Grove did the same at the start of last year’s meet. Ethan Pheifer overcame a slim deficit on the freestyle leg to get Franklin to the wall in 1:37.63, good enough for he and teammates Oliver, Barrett Daily and Anthony Ries to win by just .21 seconds.
Ratzlaff followed by winning the 200 freestyle in 1:41.53, breaking Jacob Destrampe’s meet record. He set a new county standard in the 100 butterfly as well, going 50.04 to top his future college teammate, Ethan Martin of Center Grove.
Oliver, who set county meet records in the 200 individual medley and 100 backstroke last winter, broke both of those on Saturday. He went 1:51.89 in the IM, beating his old mark by almost a second and a half, and his backstroke time of 50.65 was two hundredths of a second better than he clocked a year ago.
Oliver was named the top swimmer of the boys meet, although DeWitt opined that Ratzlaff should be entitled to visitation rights with the trophy as well.
“They go at it about just about everything, so this is just another thing to argue about,” the coach said. “It’s perfect.”
Anthony Ries outdueled Center Grove’s Garrett Crist to win the 500 free in 4:52.25. The Grizzly Cubs also won both freestyle relays; Pheifer, Daily, Callum Buchanan and Ratzlaff came from behind to win the 200, and the foursome of Buchanan, Ries, Ratzlaff and Oliver capped off the meet with a convincing victory in the 400.
Martin took first in the 100 breaststroke, the Trojans’ lone winner in the boys meet aside from diver Caleb Crady, who earned a first-place finish on Friday.
Indian Creek junior Joey Smith earned a pair of individual wins, going 21.27 to break Martin’s year-old record in the 50 freestyle and taking the 100 free in 47.33.
Franklin’s girls opened their meet with a convincing win in the medley relay. The quartet of Allie Lacy, Kabria Chapman, Grace Fisher and Gracey Payne came home in 1:47.98, almost eight seconds ahead of second-place Greenwood.
Lacy and Payne both doubled up individually. Lacy, who DeWitt called “tough as nails” on Saturday, won the 200 IM in 2:09.75 and the 100 backstroke in 58.91; Payne, who was named the top swimmer of the girls meet, hit the wall first in the 50 and 100 freestyles with respective times of 24.22 and 53.06 seconds.
“I honestly thought we did really well,” Payne said of the meet, which was conducted separately from the boys due to COVID-19 precautions. “The cheering aspect, not having the boys here is a lot different, and that’s something we’ve tried to work on.”
Paige Lawrence claimed victory in the 500 free (5:25.05) and Chapman rolled in the 100 breaststroke (1:05.17) for the Grizzly Cubs, who also won the 200 free relay behind the team of Payne, Chapman, Jenna Miller and Lawrence.
Center Grove, which got a county-record diving performance from Mia Prusiecki on Friday, got a breakout performance from another freshman on Saturday. Lara Phipps made her county debut a good one, edging Woodmen senior Grace Nuhfer by .53 seconds to take the 200 freestyle and rallying on the anchor leg to win the 400 free relay along with Kiersten Smith, Devin Trammell and Jessica Holland.
Nuhfer avenged the 200 free defeat by beating Phipps to the wall in the 100 butterfly for Greenwood’s lone event win of the morning.
For Franklin, the hope is that the victories will set the tone for the other championship meets to come.
“We’ve got a couple more weeks where it’s really important for us to live, breathe and eat some toughness, and then we’ll see what we’ve got at Mid-State,” DeWitt said. “Normally, most of our ground is made up in that final four weeks of the season; that’s when I feel like we really start to hit our stride.”
