Waukesha South/Mukwonago Girl's Swimming
In the Fall 2011 edition of WSN Illustrated, our quarterly magazine subscription, we predicted that this was the year that the Waukesha South/Mukwonago girl's swim team could dethrone yearly-favorite Arrowhead. The co-op proved that they were up to the challenge, narrowly passing the Warhawks by two points to take the team championship and this edition of the PlayinTheDells.com's Splash of the Week.
Waukesha South/Mukwonago tallied 293 total points over the weekend to win their first ever state championship and prevented Arrowhead (291 points) from winning their fourth consecutive team title, and ninth in ten years. The co-op came into the state meet ranked first in four different events: 200-yard medley relay; 100-yard butterfly (Kayla Skenandore); and the 200- and 400-yard freestyle relays. In total, the team qualified three relays and twelve swimmers, six of which competed in at least two different individual races.
The 200-yard medley relay kicked off the meet with a third-place finish while sophomore Abby Jagdfeld and freshman Molly Machon finished second and third, respectively, in the 200-yard freestyle.
Junior Briana Horozewski nabbed a fifth-place finish in the 200-yard individual medley while freshman Natalie Clausen came in at seventh. The team also had top-5 performances in the 100- and 500-yard freestyle and the 100-yard breast stroke, but it was the work of one senior and the final race of the day that catapulted the team to the gold.
Senior Kayla Skenandore, the defending champion in the 100 butterfly, came into the meet qualified in two events (100 butterfly and 50 freestyle). She was four-hundredths of a second from a second place finish in the 50 freestyle relay (23.83), narrowly losing to Badger's Anna Brooks. Arrowhead's Mary Warren took the event in 23.37. Skenandore found herself in the driver's seat of her favorite event though, taking the gold in the 100 butterfly for the second year in a row in 55.14 seconds, over a second faster than the second-place finished.
While Skenandore's individual feats were impressive, it was the work of the 400 freestyle relay that was the most important. Coming into the last event of the day, Waukesha South/Mukwonago trailed Arrowhead 253-259 in the team standing. The co-op needed to come in first-place and needed Arrowhead to not come in second for them to win the team title. They held up their end, winning the race at 3:28.61 and were assisted by second place-seeded Muskego, who took second in front of Arrowhead.
The Splash of the Week is sponsored by PlayInTheDells.com. It highlights the player, coach or team that has "made a splash" in the world of high school sports. This could mean coming out of nowhere to do something great, going above and beyond the call of duty, etc.
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