Carmel Girls Swim 1:39 at Indiana HS Sectional Meet, a Week Out from State Meet

Indiana High School Girls’ State Championship Series – Sectional Meets

• February 2-4, 2023
• Various Sites, Indiana
• Short Course Yards (25 yards), Prelims/Finals
• Results Page

The Indiana high school girls’ swimming & diving postseason began this weekend with Sectional Championships at 20 sites around the state.

The winners of each Sectional meet automatically qualify for the state finals, in addition to any swimmer who hits the state championship qualifying standard in the championship or consolation finals of an event.

The next-fastest swimmers are then added to each event until 32-per-event are qualified.

Diving, meanwhile, advances four-per-section to regional meets, and eight-per-region to the state championship meet.

Carmel Sectional

• Winner – Carmel High School

The highlight of the weekend, as it usually is, was the Carmel Sectional, featuring the Carmel High School girls that have won 36 consecutive state championships.

The girls roared to 589 points and a win by over 200 points.

Saturdays finals included a 1:39.26 in the 200 medley relay, which even before the State Championship meet is the fastest high school time in the country this year. That team is chasing the National High School Record of 1:38.13 that was set in 2018 by Fossil Ridge High School.

The team of Berit Berglund (25.32), Molly Sweeney (28.03), Alex Shackell (23.37), and Meghan Christman (22.54) combined for the win. Sweeney, a freshman, is the new face for that quartet which set the Indiana High School State Record in 1:38.55 at last year’s state championship meet.

Even as just a freshman, her 28.03 split is already faster than Vivian Wilson’s breaststroke leg from last year’s state meet by four-tenths of a second, which is coincidentally about the gap between that relay and the national record.

In summation: the record watch is on next weekend in Indianapolis.

The Carmel girls swept the meet the events at the meet, including a 1:01.94 by the freshman Sweeney in the 100 breaststroke and a 2:00.58 for another win, in the 200 IM – both shy of her best times.

Sweeney, a life-long Carmel Swim Club product, looks poised to be the next superstar product of the Carmel High School machine.

She’s not the only newcomer for the Greyhounds either: after Wilson’s 1:02.40 in the 100 breaststroke, another freshman, Lucy Enoch, swam 1:02.94 for 3rd place, just missing a best time.

There are plenty of returning stars for Carmel too. Sophomore Alex Shackell won the 50 free (22.42) and 100 fly (52.04); Lynsey Bowen won the 200 free (1:48.27) but was only 3rd in the 500 free, an event where she’s the defending state champion; and Berit Berglund won the 100 back in 54.31, where she’s the defending state champion.

So deep is Carmel that even with stars like Shackell and Berglund swimming only the 200 medley relay, that they still dominated the 200 free relay by almost five seconds and the 400 free relay by 14.5 seconds.

Fishers Sectional

• Winner – Fishers High School

Last year’s 2nd and 3rd place teams from the state championship meet, Fishers High School and Hamilton Southeastern, went head-to-head at the Fishers Sectional on Saturday.

Fishers won with 559 points, just ahead of the 495 points from Hamilton Southeastern.

The victorious Fishers team won the first give races of the meet before Hamilton’s Audrey Crawford came out of the dive break with a 54.51 in the 100 fly to win – missing her best time from last year’s state meet by .15 seconds.

Fishers went on another won, and ultimately won all but two events at the meet.

That included a 23.64 in the 50 free from freshman Addison Carlile, which is a new best time for her by .23 seconds, and a 1:48.16 in the 200 free from senior Jojo Ramey. Ramey was the state runner-up in the 200 free last year, and the highest-returning finisher from that race by over a second-and-a-half.

Other Sectionals Results

• Former Concord High star Grace Brenneman (3rd in the 50 free at last year’s state meet) graduated, but her younger sister Catherine Brenneman has taken up the torch as a freshman. She won at the Elkhart Sectional in the 200 free (1:49.51) and was 2nd in the 500 free (5:01.20).
• At the Penn High School Sectional meet, junior Lily Christianson of the home team began her sprint title defense with wins in both the 50 free (22.60) and 100 free (49.26). Both times are faster than the 22.85/49.99 that she swam at last year’s State Championship meet.

All Sectional Champions

• Lake Central Sectional (14 teams) – Crown Point (500 points)
• Hobart Sectional (10 teams) – Chesterton (519.5 points)
• Penn Sectional (10 teams) – Penn (554 points)
• Warsaw Sectional (14 teams) – Culver Academies (456 points)
• Elkhart Sectional (12 teams) – Concord (499 points)
• Fort Wayne South Side Sectional (12 teams) – Fort Wayne Carroll (535 points)
• Jay County Sectional (12 teams) – Delta (398 points)
• Fishers Sectional (12 teams) – Fishers (559 points)
• Carmel Sectional (10 teams) – Carmel (589 points)
• Crawfordsville Sectional (14 teams) – Western Boone (360 points)
• Avon Sectional (10 teams) – Plainfield (496 points)
• West Lafayette Sectional (12 teams) – Zionsville (573 points)
• Ben Davis Sectional (13 teams) – Brownsburg (527.5 points)
• North Central Sectional (12 teams) – Indianapolis North Central (492 points)
• New Palestine Sectional (11 teams) – Greenfield-Central (506 points)
• Franklin Community Sectional (10 teams) – Center Grove (516 points)
• Columbus North Sectional (14 teams) – Bloomington South (475 points)
• Floyd Central Sectional (15 teams) – Floyd Central (502 points)
• Jasper Sectional (16 teams) – Jasper (471 points)
• Evansville North Sectional (13 teams) – Castle (426 points)