Cape Central swims to first-place finish at Rec Center Relays

The Cape Central Tigers continued their strong start to the season with a dominating first-place finish at the Rec Center Relays on Thursday.

The Tigers (98 points) cleared the second-place Indians by 34 points on the way to victory.

“We have a core group of girls that train year round,” Tigers coach Dana Powell said. “It’s a core that we can really expand on. We also have some girls that swam club growing up and they’re good swimmers. We also have girls who have never been on the team so it’s just a really fun combination of the different experiences.”

For Powell, seeing the growth of the girls on her team is always exciting.

“We had a couple girls who really couldn’t swim the length of the pool when they started and now today they’re going back-and-forth,” Powell said. “It’s looking so good. Coaching swimming is very rewarding and I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to.”

Helping lead the path to victory for the Tigers was Sydney and Addison Ringwald and Marianne Dean to name a few.

“They’re so valuable,” Powell said. “They bring not only their swimming ability but their experience at big meets and their ability to handle some nerves. The great thing with this being a relay meet is that if you have one of those girls behind you know that if you make a mistake that they will be able to pick up the slack.”

The ability to perform in big meets is something that Powell says has to be learned simply through experience.

“We’ve talked about a few things to try and prepare for that,” Powell said. “But, there’s nothing better than that firsthand experience.”

The Tigers are now preparing to get that firsthand experience as they have three-straight weekends of what Powell considers to be big meets with the Kirkwood Invitational this weekend, the COMO Invitational next weekend and the City of Roses the following weekend.

“We’re in Kirkwood tomorrow where there will be some really fast teams,” Powell said. “This is the beginning of us seeing the competition we will see at the end of the season. We will see what we can do and what we need to do and how we need to set up our relays.”