HIBBING— The Northeast Range-Ely swimmers may not be headed to the state meet, but they left Saturday’s season-ending 7A sectional competition with heads held high.
“We had a great meet,” said Head Coach Cheri DeBeltz following the event held at Hibbing High School. “It was our best finish ever at the section meet. Ninety-five percent of our swimmers had a lifetime or season-best swim. We also set three new team records.”
Two of those records came in relay events. The team of Kelly Thompson, Lily Tedrick, Anna Larson, and Morgan McClelland finished the 200-medley relay in 2:01.07, a mark that left the team in fifth place among the 11 teams in the competition. The same swimmers set a new school mark in the 200-freestyle relay, with a time of 1:47.65, to finish in sixth place.
Tedrick, a senior, set a new individual school mark in the 100-breastroke with a time of 1:13.55, to finish in fourth place among a total of 16 swimmers.
Tedrick also took fifth in the 200-individual medley, with a time of 2:27.45.
McClelland, also a senior, finished eighth in the 200-freestyle with a time of 2:10.20.
Adding to the team’s strong performance was its qualification for a gold academic award for its combined GPA of 3.81.
“The other very humbling and completely unexpected thing was that I was named Section 7A Head Coach of the Year and one of our assistant coaches, Lynn Gulbrandson, was named 7A assistant coach of the year,” said DeBeltz. “What an honor for our program.”