When the high school girls swimming season started in August, Visitation junior and co-captain Katie Miller wasn't sure how the team would make the state meet. Last year's squad, Visitation's ninth state champion team in a row, graduated 17 seniors.
"But last week's sections, it felt like a whole different team," Miller said. "All those people whose first sections meet it was have grown exponentially, and I'm really proud of them."
Visitation will go for its 10th title in a row Saturday after showing depth at Friday's Class 1A state preliminaries at the Jean K. Freeman Aquatic Center on the University of Minnesota campus. Virginia holds the state record with 12 titles in a row from 1930-41.
Visitation, with nine swimmers competing and three making their state debuts, qualified for all three relays with the fourth-fastest times. Visitation also has individual swimmers in six of eight championship heats.
The 500-yard freestyle was once again a strong event for Visitation — it took first, second, third and fourth place in the event last year — as Miller had the top qualifying time (5 minutes, 3.38 seconds) followed by senior Tessa Lindstrom at 5:04.72.
Miller, who's verbally committed to swim at Colgate, also had the second-best time in the 200 freestyle (1:53.05) and anchored the 200 and 400 freestyle relays.
Junior Maggie Farley, also one of six captains, had the fastest time in the 100 butterfly (55.94) and advanced to the finals in the 50 freestyle, in which she took third last fall, with a time of 24.02 on Friday. She also anchors the 200 medley relay and swims the first leg of the 200 freestyle relay. It's a contrast to last year's meet, when she swam the endurance event, the 500 freestyle. She called it a "mentality shift."
"It's been fun getting to try some different stuff with this team," Farley said.
