Eight-year old Gracison Saylors, of the Dalton Dolphins, exits the pool after a first place finish in the 8 & under 25-yard freestyle event. Saylors was one of only two swimmers to reach the 100-point mark in the Chattanooga Area Swim League's Bill Caulkins City Meet. Ellie Taliaferro of the Fairyland Flash also scored 100 points while breaking four records. The Dolphins finished runner-up to the champion Greenie's, 2,098 to 1941.5.
photo by Dennis Norwood
There were some outstanding performances during Friday’s opening day in the annual Bill Caulkins City Meet for the Chattanooga Area Swim League at Baylor, but they got even better on Saturday.
Five meet records were broken on Friday with Fairyland’s Ellie Taliaferro getting two.
Well, the 12-year-old rising seventh grader at GPS ended up winning three more events on the last day with two more records to finish as the co-high scorer with Dalton’s Gracison Saylors, who also finished with 100 points.
The Signal Mountain Green Giants entered Saturday night’s finals with a 119-point lead over second-place Dalton, the two-time defending champ in this meet.
Nothing much changed on that final day as Dalton made a charge, but simply didn’t have enough power to overcome the Green Giants as they returned to the top with 2,098 points.
Dalton was a distant second with 1,941.5 while Stuart Heights was third with 1,638. Ooltewah and Fairyland completed the top five teams with 1,584.5 and 967 points, respectively.
They didn’t give an MVP for this popular season-ending meet, but Taliaferro would have been a unanimous selection as she had the meet of a lifetime. And to think that she tore an ACL earlier in the year and wasn’t even sure she’d be able to compete, much less dominate the way she did.
Six-year-old Bella McBryar, also a member of the Fairyland Flash, got a pair of records in the 25 free and 25 back while Ellie Waldrep of Stuart Heights posted a new record of 26.88 seconds in the 50 back among the 13-14 girls.
Then in the final event of the meet – the 200 free relay – Dalton’s 11-12 boys broke their own record they had set during the preliminary round earlier in the day with a time of 1:46.85 while the Signal Mountain 13-14 girls did the same with a time of 1:43.83, which was significantly better than the old standard of 1:45.03.
Dalton’s foursome included Bruno Valdez, Will Haley, Orrin Withrow and Roman Valdez while Signal’s quartet included Megan Hanson, Audrey Rackel, Ellie Jenkins and Jewel Gordon.
Ooltewah's Noah Holliman broke the record for 6 and under boys in the 25 free during the preliminary heats with a time of 19.72 seconds before breaking it again in the finals with a winning time of 19.31. He also won the 25 back with a time of 20.57 seconds.
Signal Mountain coach Jake Sosna was feeling pretty good early Saturday evening, long before the final scores had been announced. He knew that his team came into this meet on a five-meet winning streak and that winning just continued.
“We brought it back,” he said of the championship trophy, feeling totally confident that his team had done what was necessary to take it back from the Dolphins.
“We had a phenomenal day all across the board and we just kept moving up all day long. And I can’t say how important our “B” relays are, but it was depth like that that kept us in the game. They all swam awesome today.
“We’re only losing two seniors and that’s exciting because we should be pretty good for several years to come. We’re on a roll right now, but we came into today’s action with a nice lead.
“We had a great round in the butterfly in the morning session, but we don’t mess around in relays. We work on those just about every day,” he added.
Dalton coach Jason Mezaros had all the praise in the world for the top teams.
“Signal Mountain and Stuart Heights were great as they both had outstanding meets, but our kids swam really well and I couldn’t be any more proud,” he said afterward.
“I think we got to within 60 points of Signal earlier in the day, but they came right back and they had some great relays at the end. We couldn’t have asked for any more from our kids as we had a great weekend.
“We had a bunch of personal records and kept advancing in place all weekend. We stayed upbeat the whole time, so it was a good experience for us,” he added.
Ringgold’s Emma Pulliam and Taliaferro were the only swimmers to win three individual races on Saturday while eight others won two.
Those double winners included Dalton’s Cole Withrow, Roman Valdez, Emilio Valdez and Saylors while Ooltewah got double wins from Jillian Cantrell, Elijah Martin and Holliman. Signal’s Peter Lochmaier and Stuart Heights’ Waldrep also won twice.
Fairyland’s Anne Dassow and Jon Pat Ransom of Stuart Heights were winners of the Jennifer Fugate Award.
Other candidates for the award honoring the memory of the late Ringgold teenager included Fort Oglethorpe’s Timothy DeBord, Cumberland’s Chloe Vernon, Signal Mountain’s Joseph Smith, Dalton’s duo of Brandt Hudson and Oli Valdez and Cleveland teammates Jason Chung and Suzanne Liner.
(Email John Hunt at nomarathonmoose@gmail.com)
Dalton's Roman Valdez, shown on his way to a first place finish in the 11-12 50-yard butterfly heat, scored 97 points as his team finished runner-up to Signal Mountain in this year's Bill Caulkins City Meet, held at the Baylor School natatorium.
photo by Dennis Norwood