Nothing in baseball can match an ace pitcher, not even the weight of history.
FORT WAYNE – They were shouting her name from the nosebleeds, as Carroll’s Ciana Heaston climbed out of the pool Saturday afternoon.
“Nice, Ciana, nice!” hollered the Carroll rooters – some of whom, inexplicably, were dressed in togas.
And Heaston hadn’t even won.
She finished third in the 100 breaststroke at the girls swimming and diving sectional, behind Caroline Weigand and Courtney Klefeker from Homestead. But it was cause for celebration nonetheless, because she’d touched in 1:06.80 – a second-and-a-half faster than her prelim time and well under the state-cut time of 1:107.19.
Making your cuts is what the sectional is mostly all about.
“It’s a really nice qualifier, basically,” said Homestead coach Chad Englehart, whose Spartans swept all three relays and won every event but three to win the sectional with 558 points. “You have to remember, nothing counts until today. So it doesn’t matter if you’ve made your state cuts all season long, if you miss it today, you’re out of luck.
“So I think everybody understands what’s at stake. It’s kind of like the Packers – a great season is a great season, but if you don’t play well in the playoffs, it’s all over.”
Not a problem for the Spartans. More than one Homestead swimmer qualified for state in the 200 individual medley (where Klefeker, Reagan Cook and Weigand finished 1-3-4), the 100 backstroke (where Sarah Lohman and Bailey Pressey finished 1-2) and the 100 breast (where Weigand and Klefeker were 1-2). All three Homestead relays also made the state cut, and Snider and Carroll also qualified in the 400 freestyle relay.
Homestead obliterated Snider’s 8-year-old sectional record in that one, shaving more than three seconds of it with a 3:30.78. It was the third and final sectional record to fall Saturday; Sydney Bull of Carroll toppled her own 100 butterfly mark of 55.55 seconds with a 55.35, and Mariah Hamil of Homestead erased Emilee Duquette’s year-old 100 freestyle mark with a 51.84 effort.
“It felt really great to finally get the record and go under 52,” Hamil said.
In the 400 free relay, Snider – which had two winners, Hannah Miller in the 500 free and Michaela Mintch in the 50 free – finished second in 3:36.17, eight seconds better than its prelim time and three seconds under the state cut of 3:39.64. Carroll finished third in 3:37.88, a whopping 14 seconds faster than its prelim time.
“That’s unbelievable,” Carroll coach John Gibson said. “That what you can do when you get to be part of a relay and you all want it bad enough.”
Heaston, meanwhile, wanted it plenty bad, too.
“Yeah, there’s a lot of pressure, but I just got up there and didn’t think about it,” she said. “I just swam it.”
