Seven meets into the season, the swimming and diving team at West Hartford’s Hall High School remains undefeated.

Hall’s Emmie LaSpada continues to turn in winning times this season. Submitted photo

Submitted

At 7-0, you would think the Hall girls swim team would be sitting in a good place. They are, sort of, according head coach John McClure who saw what he thought was a lackluster performance against Farmington on Wednesday. His Warriors turned up the effort and handled a strong Southington team on Friday.

Following the meet against Farmington McClure was lamenting what he saw as some sloppiness in his swimmers. “Some little things need to be fixed (starts, turns, finishes),” said the coach.

It started in the first event when Hall’s “B” relay was disqualified, dropping points from the Warriors total. But the usual strong team performances helped pull Hall ahead as the meet progressed.

Strong performances by senior captain Tara Tiernan continue to help Hall maintain its 7-0 record. Submitted photo

Senior captains Tara Tiernan and Caroline Turner went 1-2 in the 200 freestyle, continued with a 1-2-3 sweep in the 200 yard IM with freshman Maggie Mantz taking first, followed by Aislinn Mitchell and Emmie LaSpada.

Another strong showing by the divers found Rachel Pinsky and Callie Henderson taking the top spots with Bridget Aube taking fourth. “Our divers continue to get us good points in every meet,” McClure said.

Leading 56-21 after diving, the Warriors took first place in the 100 fly (Mitchell), 100 free (Tiernan), and 500 free (Mantz) to put the meet officially in the win column and allowing Hall to swim unofficial for the remainder of the meet.

Two days later McClure hoped his message had gotten through to his skilled bunch, but in the opening relay against Southington, he saw his top team disqualified, and Hall was down after the first swim.

Fortunately his talented freshman and balance of other swimmers stepped up their game from that point on. The team’s depth was on display as the Warriors would take multiple places and points in the rest of the meet, including sweeping the 200 IM (Tiernan, LaSpada and Aeva Silverman), the 100 freestyle (Tiernan, Jeanne Wang, and Grace Coll), and the 100 yard butterfly (Mantz, Kelly Tiernan, and Lindsey Schmucker).

Hall would also go first and third in the 100 yard backstroke (Silverman and Schmucker), as well as the 500 freestyle (Mitchell and Alissa Palmer) and a nail biting win in the 100 breaststroke by LaSpada who won by seventeen-one hundredths of a second.

“We did a fine job today,” said McClure. “The team as a whole swam well today as we had some Southington swimmers that challenged us and the kids responded well …”

The hardest part of the season is just ahead for the Warriors. After a road meet against Berlin, they will meet up with Conard, East Catholic, and South Windsor in an Invitational at Cornerstone before the annual showdown with Conard on the 26th. McClure knows this will be the biggest challenge for his team and is looking forward to the great competition. “South Windsor, Conard and East Catholic all have good kids in several events,” he said.

Based on the results his own talented group has put up this year there are two things for certain: those meets will be close and be exciting, and Hall is in a much better place this year entering them than a season ago. Hall now stands at 7-0 overall and 3-0 in the CCC South/White division.

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