During the 15-minute interlude, the entire Manistee team climbed the awards podium to lead a crowd of hundreds at the Paine Aquatic Center in a raucous chorus of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’.”
The Chippewas didn’t, but the deficit proved too much to overcome as Spring Lake edged Manistee by a mere 16 points (538-522) for the championship title on Saturday. Manistee, which swept the regular season duals to earn a share of the overall title, was denied a second straight outright championship.
“Individually, our kids did a heck of a job,” said Manistee coach Corey Van Fleet. “I don’t know if we could do any more.”
That much seemed evident until the very end. In the final event, Manistee’s 400-yard freestyle relay posted a five-second drop from Friday’s preliminaries, but still finished second in the event to the Lakers, who outnumbered the Chippewas by 15 in the meet.
“I think we did more than we could,” said Manistee junior Syriah Dobis. “We wanted to win but knew Spring Lake has a lot more people than us. … A lot of people made state times and broke records.”
Manistee notched four more Division 3 state finals times on Friday and added another Saturday as junior Jessica Gustad qualified in the 100-yard breaststroke, despite finishing third in the event. That was one indication of the quality performances posted on a day in which pool records were broken in nine of the 11 swimming events.
“Our conference will be so well represented this year,” Van Fleet said of the Nov. 22-23 state finals at Holland Aquatic Center. “As a conference we’ve taken some giant strides with some quality swims.”
Manistee, which is in its fifth season as a program, wasn’t close to competing with Spring Lake a few years ago. But the Chippewas have challenged the Lakers for conference dominance the last two seasons and the two teams clearly separated themselves from the pack again Saturday as Muskegon Catholic Central finished a distant third (378), Ludington was fourth (235) and Fremont fifth (94).
“We jumped ahead leaps and bounds,” Van Fleet said. “We have someone qualified (for the state finals) in every (swimming) event but one.”
Manistee won conference titles in five of the 12 events while Spring Lake had six and MCC one. The Chippewas took first in two of the three relays, with Valerie Urban, Maddy Applegarth, Dobis and Gustad winning the 200-medley while Dobis, Gustad, Sara Wehrmeister and Anna Kutschke prevailed in the 200-yard freestyle. Individually, Kutschke won the 50 and 100 freestyles and Allie Zimmerman took first in the 500 free with an impressive comeback.
Zimmerman, who shaved almost 19 seconds off her seed time to hit a state finals mark in Friday’s prelims at 5:43.74, bested the mark a day later at 5:43.65.
“It feels really good because I didn’t have a background of getting that time,” said the Manistee sophomore. “To come back and swim even better than what I swam yesterday was just amazing.”
Zimmerman also rallied in the final lap to edge Spring Lake’s Roxane Strobel (5:43.78) at the finish.
“It was really hard because the whole time we were just kind of eyeing each other and then I saw her ahead on the last flip turn and I’m like, OK, I’ve got to go,” Zimmerman said. “All that work for four months kind of paid off.”
Zimmerman’s win in the eighth event put the Chippewas in front 365-354 — one of three lead changes in the meet. But, the Lakers jumped ahead two events later and held onto the lead.
