Mason’s girl’s team reeled off its second consecutive victory Friday against Loudoun County at Sterling’s Claude Moore Rec Center, returning to the form it displayed last season when the Mustangs went 12-0. Shortly after having lost back-to-back meets for the first time since Jan. 2008, coach Jon-Michael Lemon’s unit found its stroke against the Raiders, trumping host Loudoun County, a school with nearly double the students of Mason, 150-136 on the road behind 22 personal-best times.
“After having time off from competition I was really happy to see we didn’t have any type of let down,” coach Jon-Michael Lemon said. “The swimmers know that they’re in a good position to do well in this district.”
Leading the way for the Mustangs was senior captain Kelley Frank, a dual winner in the 100- and 50-yard freestyle events. In the 50, Frank beat classmate and teammate Karen Hamill by .57 seconds and also bested her teammate, sophomore Leah Thirkill, in the 100-yard freestyle, winning in 1:01.77 by under two seconds.
“We have consistently been getting better since the beginning,” Frank said. “I feel like all of our hard work is coming together and week by week we’re getting stronger. This victory on Friday was great because we knew it was coming.”
Frank, on the mend from bout with strep throat, also served as the third leg of the victorious 200-yard medley relay, teaming up with Hamill and sophomores Gen Jordan and Carolyn Schmitt, outdistancing Mason’s second-place “B” team by over 17 seconds. Schmitt, Thirkill, Hamill and Frank, despite falling to Loudoun’s “A” unit in the 200-yard freestyle relay, still managed to qualify for states in 1:50.25.
Jordan took first in the 100-yard backstroke, improving on her seed time by three seconds to best Raiders senior Julia Strange in 1:11.42. Jordan also swam as the second leg in the winning 400-yard freestyle relay, joining Hamill, junior Alicia Pierce and freshman Julia Estrada to win by over 12 seconds in 4:20.11.
Other winners for the Mustangs included Pierce, who took first in the 500-yard freestyle, and Schmitt, who won the 100-yard breaststroke by under five seconds in 1:18.43.
Mason’s boys’ team fell to 2-2 after losing 148-137 to the Raiders. Junior Will Doty broke his own 100-yard butterfly record via a six-second victory in 56.53. Though Doty finished 24 seconds worse than his state-qualifying seed time in the 500-yard freestyle, he still managed to win the event versus Loudoun County by over nine seconds.
Junior Sam Butler scored a pair of close wins, eking out a victory in the 50-yard freestyle by .39 seconds and taking the 100-yard by six-tenths. Seven seconds separated the winning 400-yard freestyle relay team, as Butler and Doty joined sophomore Alex Valentino and junior Dane Warner to improve on their seed time by .03 seconds.
The Mustangs also enjoyed victories by senior captain Sam Parker in the 100-yard breaststroke, and freshman Lucas Cherry in the 100-yard backstroke, who edged out Warner by 1.3 seconds in the event. Cherry, Parker, Doty and Warner also took first in the 200-yard medley relay, and the quartet has qualified for the AA state meet.
“I was very impressed,” said Lemon, particularly noting the efforts of senior Emilio Ramos and sophomore Reid Back. “Going into the meet, Loudoun had been a competitive team in the district and I thought that we out-performed our expectations. We had some really impressive times across the board.”
Mason returned to the pool Tuesday night against former Bull Run District and single-A rival Clarke County at Signal Knob pool. Both the boys and the girls won handily n the road, the former securing a 119-59 victory while the latter won 119-51. Doty qualified for states in the 100-yard backstroke and also won the 100-yard butterfly. Hamill and Frank each won two events as well.
The Mustangs’ final home meet of the season at the Dunn Loring YWCA will take place Friday versus Park View High School.
“I think we’ve handled the AA transition very well, much better than I thought we would,” Frank said. “We were ready to step up our competition, to handle the AA teams. We have just as much talent and just as much depth to match up with them.”
