The Tallassee High School swim team just finished their 2021 season. The team consisted of 18 swimmers ranging from 7th to 12th grade. They swam at 6 swim meets around the state before heading to the Sectional and State meets. The team competed in Prattville, Montgomery, Brewton, Opelika, and Birmingham during their regular season. These meets consisted of 3 or more teams competing against one another.
Swimmers chose from 8 individual events to swim at each meet. Individual events include the 50, 100, 200, and 500 yard freestyle and 100 yard events including breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly. The 8th individual event is the 200 yard Individual Medley (IM) where athletes swim 50 yards of each event in a specific order. Swimmers are also placed on relay teams where 4 swimmers each swim a leg of the race. These relays include the 200 and 400 yard freestyle as well as a 200 yard medley relay where each swimmer swims a different stroke. Most meets allow athletes to swim 2-3 individual events as well as on 2 relay teams. Individuals are ranked based on how fast they swim each event and the 8 fastest swimmers in each event also score points. Team scores are based on points and are separated by men’s and women’s scores.
The weekend of November 19-20, athletes who swam a sectional qualifying time at any point during the regular season were invited to swim in the sectional meet. This meet was held in Birmingham where 9 Tallassee swimmers competed against all other high school swim teams in the Central Region. Friday was a preliminary meet where swimmers were competing for a spot in the finals to be held the next day. The fastest 8 swimmers from the 1-5A division advanced to finals. 8 athletes swam in at least 1 individual event at the prelim meet and all 8 swimmers advanced to finals. During the finals meet, the top 3 swimmers in each event or up to 8 swimmers with state qualifying times advance to the state meet. Five Tallassee swimmers earned a chance to swim at state in individual events as well as 4 relay teams.
The state swim meet was held on December 3-4 in Auburn. This meet was a prelim/finals meet as well. The Tallassee State Team included Macey Stewart (10), Ivy Davis (10), Allison Johnson (10), Lilly Haynes (9), Valerie Johnson (8), Corbin Grover (11), Adam Aldridge (10), Camden Mask (9), and Chase Webster (9). After the preliminary meet, Macey, Chase, and Camden earned the opportunity to swim in the finals as well as all the swimmers on the 4 relays. In the finals, Macey Stewart won 1st place in both the 100 yard freestyle and the 100 yard backstroke events in the 1-5A division. She also broke the state record in the backstroke swimming the event in 55.75 seconds. The previous record was 56.09 seconds and set in 2016. Camden Mask won 3rd place in the 100 yard breaststroke event in the 1-5A division. The men’s team finished in 7th place and the women’s team finished 8th in the 1-5A division. Both teams finished in 16th place overall among all teams (1-7A).
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