ST. PETERS, Mo. — Poplar Bluff swimmers broke their own team records in two of the three relay events Thursday afternoon at the MSHSAA Class 1 championships.
The Mules had their fastest times in the 200- and 400-yard freestyle relays and narrowly missed another team mark in the medley relay, but they missed advancing to the finals in all three.
Making their debut at state, seniors Kastin Caudel, Gavin Vaughn and Christian Todd, along with junior Elijah McAtee and and sophomore Carson Todd, finished at or better than their rankings heading into the event at the St. Peters Rec-Plex.
“Overall, I think they were able to stay pretty consistent,” Mules coach Kyler Sowell said. “That’s what I wanted for the first one.
“I don’t know what’s happened between last year and this year but times for the whole state, everybody got faster.”
The meet opened with the 200-medley relay with the Mules in the first of four heats. Coming in with the 28th-fastest time of the bunch that’s exactly where the Mules ended up with a time of 1 minute, 48.6 seconds.
The time was half a second slower than Poplar Bluff’s best time, set last week at the conference championships, and the Mules missed a top-16 finish to advance to Friday’s final by 5 seconds. Ft. Zumwalt East finished eighth, the final spot in the championship heat, at 1:40.92.
McAtee started in the backstroke followed by Vaughn in the butterfly, Caudel swimming the breaststroke and Carson Todd anchoring in the freestyle.
“They wouldn’t ever admit that they were anxious or nervious,” Sowell said. “You could tell by the time when they got up on the deck they were nervous. I think that did affect them.”
In the second relay, the Mules lined up next to conference rival Notre Dame in the opening of four heats in the 200-freestyle relay.
McAtee, Vaughn, Caudel and Todd finished 20th at 1:35.03, setting a new team record by 0.67 of a second.
The Mules, came in with the 25th-fastest time, missed advancing to the consolation final by 1.44 seconds.
Notre Dame finished 18th, 0.4 of a second behind the final spot while Lebanon’s time of 1:30.5 was the last to qualify for the championship final.
All four Poplar Bluff swimmers turned in splits within 0.76 of a second from each other with Carson Todd’s anchor the fastest at 23.43.
“It did help push them,” Sowell said of racing against Notre Dame.
“They got to compete against somebody they know and know well, so that did help.”
In the final event, the 400-freestyle relay, the Mules came in ranked 29th but ended up 25th.
Caudel, Christian Todd, Vaughn and McAtee finished in 3:34.16, nearly a full second faster than their time last week that set a team record.
The Mules came in ranked 29th and finished 25th, again swimming in the first of the four heats.
Three of the four swimmers had splits better than the team record in the individual 100-freestyle set by Christian Todd last week with McAtee’s anchor time of 51.8 the fastest of the group.
“The fact that they were able to do that after competing in two other relays (was good),” Sowell said.
Poplar Bluff had not had an individual swimmer or relay advance to state before this season and the Mules won the program’s first conference title after placing fourth in each of the previous two seasons.
The program started during the 2002-03 school year but was dropped after 2005-06 when the sport was moved to the fall the following year. Following a 12-year hiatus, the Mules returned to the pool four years ago when Christian Todd, Caudel and Vaughn were freshmen.
“All the seniors had a great day today, proud of them for that,” Sowell said. “The boys for next year, I said we made it to state this year, next year we go to the finals.”