Elisha Dockery competes in the men’s 50-yard freestyle on Wednesday. Dockery posted two individual third place finishes in the 50-free and 100-yard breastroke while also being part of the 200-yard freestyle relay team that came in third with a season best time.
Andrew Smolar | The Laurinburg Exchange
Scotland senior Avery Stutts dives off the block during the women’s 50-yard freestyle on Wednesday night at St. Andrews University.
Andrew Smolar | The Laurinburg Exchange
Sydney Eury swims the 50-yard freestyle.
Andrew Smolar | The Laurinburg Exchange
LAURINBURG —The Scotland CoEd swimming team competed in a meet against the other Sandhills Athletic Conference schools on Wednesday night at St. Andrews University. It was the third competition of the season for the team, having also had meets back on Nov. 20 and last week on Dec. 4.
The women’s team finished in fourth place out of seven teams with 80 points scored. The team standings in order were Pinecrest (269 points scored), Union Pines (261 points scored), Richmond (93 points scored), Scotland, Hoke County (70 points scored), Lee County (15 points scored) and Southern Lee (14 points scored).
The men also finished in fourth place as a team with 89 points scored. The team standings in order were Pinecrest (261 points scored), Union Pines (248 points scored), Southern Lee (91 points scored), Scotland, Richmond (83 points scored) and Hoke County (19 points scored). Lee County did not score on the men’s side.
The Scots collectively posted five personal best swims on Wednesday. Three swimmers did so in the 50-yard freestyle: Zoey Bowman, Dawson Blue and Ramsey Hale while two others had best swims in the 100-yard freestyle: Caycee Bert and Mavin McKenzie.
Bowman won the women’s 50-yard freestyle with her time of 28.98 seconds, down from her seed time of 29.16 seconds while Blue improved from 43.69 seconds to 42.87 seconds with Hale dropping from 49.14 seconds to 48.71 seconds.
Bert finished in sixth place of the women’s 100-yard freestyle by dropping her time from 1:07.95 to 1:07.37. McKenzie improved from 1:10.98 to 1:10.56 to finish in sixth of men’s 100-yard freestyle.
The men’s 200-yard Freestyle Relay also dropped nearly four seconds from their previous best time this season. The team of Mark Labib, Rylan Priest, Elisha Dockery and McKenzie combined to touch the wall at 2:15.60 (down from their seed time of 2:19.31) for third place in the event.
Taylor Johnson won the women’s 500-yard freestyle with a time of 5:46.89, nearly 44 seconds ahead of the remaining swimmers and also added a second-place finish in the women’s 100-yard backstroke with a time of 1:12.71. Dockery finished in third place of both the men’s 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard breastroke with times of 28.43 and 1:21.74, respectively. The women’s 200-yard freestyle relay team of Johnson, Bert, Bowman and Addison Johnson combined to finish in 2:11.47, which was good enough to get second in the event.
Head Coach Aliechia Post was especially glad to see Bowman set a personal best in her 50-yard freestyle swim. She credited Bowman for her continued commitment to her goal and was excited to see the work pay off.
“I’m super proud of Zoey’s 50 Free performance this evening,” Post said. “She has been working really hard to get below 29 seconds and she did it tonight, that was even better than her first-place finish.”
The Scots will now have nearly a full month until their next meet, which will be on Jan. 8 and held at St. Andrews against conference opponents. The first event will begin at 6 p.m. that day.