Tornado swimmers improve times throughout team

ELMIRA – Saturday’s Elmira Invitational saw 19 of the top high school swim teams from Section IV and Section V meet in the pool for an exciting day of races.
The Lady Purple Tornado swimmers were one of those 19 teams, giving the Norwich squad a large meet to participate in before sectionals early next month. The Tornado had many swimmers finish in the top of the Class B events despite the races being swam across Class A, Class B and Class C.
Overall, Norwich swimmers stood on the podium at the end of two events with several of the girls finish with some of their best personal times.
The Purple Tornado’s Katie Blaisure place fourth out of all swimmers in the 50 yard freestyle as she kicked her way to a time of 25.61 seconds. Teammate Angela Carlson just missed the podium, placing seventh with a 26.23, falling to the sixth place swimmer by .09 of a second.
Norwich’s 400 yard freestyle relay team finished sixth in the event out of all teams in the three classes, racing to a time of 4:05.09 – nearly seven seconds better than their seed time. Carlson started off the race with Abby Hansen and Margie Winter taking the middle stretches and Blaisure was the Tornado’s anchor.
Carlson started off with one of the top eight splits, swimming her portion of the race the pool in 1:01.42. Keeping nearly the same pace, Hansen and Winter battled to keep Norwich’s pace against the other teams in the pool. Coming down to her part of the race, Blaisure finished strong for the Purple Tornado at 58.47 seconds to help the relay team slide into the sixth place spot.
Norwich’s 200 medley relay team bettered their seed time by almost a second and were the fourth best group in Class B for the event.
Oxford’s Regan Finnegan was the fifth best in the 200 yard freestyle race for Class C, racing to a time of 2:20.9. Her pace knocked off six seconds from her seeding time.
Hansen shaved five and half seconds off her 500 yard freestyle best time at the invitational, swimming the race in under six minutes (5:57.72).
“We had a lot of best times,” said Norwich head coach Saundra Gantt. “The ones that weren’t were within a second of them. And while we weren’t as fast as I would’ve liked, the girls swam hard and prepared themselves for the sectional meet coming up in a few weeks.
“I’m looking forward to see what we will do this year at the big meet as we have continued to improve week after week this season.”
Norwich travels to Owego Tuesday afternoon. Action is set to begin at 5:30 p.m. for the Southern Tier Athletic Conference dual meet.