Dover swimmers in Canton for state meet
CANTON (WJER) (February 23, 2022) – Two individual swimmers and five relay teams from Dover High School are joining Lucas Lane as qualifiers at the Division II state swim meet at C.T. Branin Natatorium in Canton this week.
The swimmers warmed up Wednesday evening at start preliminaries Thursday at 5:30 p.m. The finals are Friday evening.
Lane earned automatic bids by placing first in the 200 freestyle and second in the 500 freestyle at the district meet last week. He’ll be the No. 1 seed in Canton in the 200 and the sixth seed in the 500. Lane is also part of two state qualifying relay teams.
On the girls’ side for Dover, Reagan Durbin qualified in the 100 backstroke and Holly Perkowski qualified in the 100 butterfly. Perkowski did something no other Dover female swimmer has ever done.
“It was a huge bonus having Holly Perkowski break a team record, go 0:59 (in the 100 butterfly),” Coach Matt Petricola said. “We’ve never a girl under a minute in the 100 fly, so that was just the cherry on top.”
All three Dover girls relay teams qualified for the state meet, too.
The Dover girls’ qualifiers are longshots to win, as are the boys relay teams. All are seeded 16 or lower. Petricola says finishing in the top 16 and earning All-Ohio honors is not out of reach.
“It’s tight – eighth through 24th place,” he said. “So that’s going to be the beauty of going back to prelims and finals this year. We get an opportunity to move up. We might be going in seeded 20th, but top 16 get to come back.”
The Dover 200 girls relay has Annie Wright, Riley Schie, Durbin and Elizabeth Lane.
The 400 girls relay has Elizabeth Lane, Durbin, Schie and Perkowski.
The girls 200 medley relay has Durbin, Cassy Connare, Perkowski and Wright.
The boys 200 has Blaze Burris, Simon Lorentz, Cameron Marshall and Lucas Lane.
The boys 400 has Burris, Kasey Ruegsegger, Marshall and Lucas Lane.