Glen Strandberg
Sports Editor

Last weekend confirmed that swimming and diving are warm weather sports: A foot of snow does not a good state meet make.

Instead of having preliminaries and then the finals to decide the winners in swimming, the foul weather eliminated the opening heats and scrunched the entire event into Saturday night, where state champions were decided by time, and time only, with no chance of the elite facing each other in one final competition.

But despite all of the cancellations and hopes of turning in a perfect race that would put themselves at the top of the medal podium, the Forest Lake swimmers pushed aside all of the distractions and turned in what head coach Barb Vailodash called, “a great meet.”

This season was full of Mark Sandager and Elijah Miller highlights, and March 3 at the University of Minnesota Aquatic Center would add a few more clips to the reel.

Since it was Sandager’s final meet of his high school career, it seems appropriate to begin with the senior.

In what was starting to feel as routine as a Paul Douglas weather update, Sandager went out and broke his own Forest Lake High School records in the 100- and 200-yard freestyle events. His time of 48.73 was good enough for 14th place in the shorter race, and the 1:46.50 in the 200 landed him in 13th place.

As for Miller — who still has another year with the Rangers — he also turned in a school record, this one coming in the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:00.49, which put him on the medal stand in 7th place. He also pulled in a time of 2:01.69 in the 200 individual medley, and that was good enough for 15th place.

In other individual events, John Goossens finished 16th in the 50 freestyle and 22nd in the 100 free.

Tyler Sperry, who basically came out of nowhere in the 100-yard butterfly at sections, turned in a time of 56.36, which put him in 20th place at state.

Many of the aforementioned swimmers were part of the 200- and 400-yard freestyle relay teams, as John Gavanda, Miller, Goossens and Sandager finished 18th and 17th respectively, barely missing school records in both events by just two tenths of a second.

“John Gavanda led off both relays and pulled out PB’s (personal bests) for himself,” Vailodash said. “Who knows what would have happened if the regular back to back prelims/finals would have happened. My guess is something very similar.”

With all of the records and personal best times, Vailodash offered a quick and easy summary to the state meet. “The guy’s were on top of the water,” she shared. “Great season.”

In Diving News

Making his first appearance at state was sophomore Jeff Isaacson, who turned in an 18th place performance, while making the first cut after five dives where the judging whittles the field down from 32 to 20 participants. When the list of divers was trimmed again after three more dives, Isaacson’s night would be over, just missing out on the final 16 by 1.55.

“Jeff didn’t quite hit his inward 1 1/2 dive in the top five dives of the night,” head diving coach Deb Welch said, “which is very unusual for him. I knew if he hit that one dive that the top 16 would be easy for him to make.

“Jeff had a great season and showed us a hint of what the future might hold for him, Welch said. “It’s always good just to get to state, and it’s even better when you start making the cuts.”

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