Travis Phillips Advances to State for the Hatchet Boys Swimming Team Published on 02/12/2018 under Sports The Hatchet Boys Swimming Team finished in fourth place at the WIAA Sectional Meet on Saturday at Hudson.

Final Scores: 1. Lakeland – 290.5 points, 7 individual events and 2 relay team qualify for WIAA State 2. River Falls – 272 points, 3 individual events and 1 relay team qualify for WIAA State 3. Rhinelander – 262 points, 5 individual events and 2 relay teams qualify for WIAA State 4. Tomahawk – 239 points, 2 individual events qualify for WIAA State 5. Pulaski – 199 points, 3 individual events qualify for WIAA State 6. Rice Lake – 183 points, 2 individual events qualify for WIAA State 7. Wausau East – 166 points 8. Antigo – 157.5 points, 2 individual events qualify for WIAA State 9. Shawano – 150 points 10. Menomonie – 114 points 11. Medford – 51 points

On the Hatchet side of the equation, an amazing day was the overall experience for the Tomahawk Boys team.

Travis Phillips had a double first place finish, and earning him lanes to compete at the WIAA State Meet.  Phillips won the 50 yard freestyle with a school record time of :22.72 and the 100 butterfly with a school record time of :54.10. Travis was seeded 2nd behind Lakeland's Grant Gibson in the 50 free, and was able to pull out a meet win in this very unforgiving race by just .08.  In Travis' 100 butterfly race he was a solid 1.54 seconds ahead of his closest competition, David King of Rhinelander who will also be swimming the event at State.

Additionally for the Hatchets, the 4th place finish with 239 points is by far the highest finish they've ever recorded in both place and point total. In 2016 they had recorded their highest ever finish with a 7th and 155.5 points, and last year in 2017 they were 8th as a team despite scoring a record to date 169 points.

With the exception of only 2 swims throughout the day, all of the Hatchets individual events placed in the top 16 to score points, with 9 of those making it onto the blocks for recognition in the top 8, and all 3 of their relays also placed in the top 8.

Of the 18 individual event swims that the Hatchets competed in, 13 of them were personal best swim times for the boys for a total of 34.08 seconds of cumulative individual and relay team time-drop. Most notable were: -Sophomore, Keaton Jed who took 2.13 seconds off of his 200 yard Individual Medley for 3rd place overall and 16 points, plus another 1.39 seconds off of his 100 yard backstroke for 8th place and 11 team points

Junior, Evan Ploeckelman who had a 1.47 second personal record in the 500 yard freestyle for 10th place and 7 points, followed shortly after with a 1.87 personal best swim in the 100 breaststroke at 1:11.63 for 6th place and 13 points

Senior Kole Svacina had an amazing day to round out his swim career in style, taking 1.51 seconds off of his 200 freestyle time down to a 1:56.72 for 7th place and 12 points, and in his signature 500 freestyle event he went 10.53 seconds faster than his time from last week's new school record time at GNC conference of 5:24.05 down to a 5:13.52 (3rd place and 16 points), a time for which we had hopes of being fast enough to make it into the state meet, though unfortunately this was not to be as Lakeland's Liam Hogan who swam a 5:08.70 for 2nd place ends up to be the 16th seed at the upcoming state meet.

A total of FIVE new school records were achieved at the meet on Saturday:
The 200 yard Medley Relay team of Senior Kole Svacina at backstroke, Junior Evan Ploeckelman at breaststroke, Sophomore Travis Phillips at butterfly and Sophomore Keaton Jed at freestyle came away with a new record in the first event of the day! They broke the old record set at the same meet in 2017 at 1:51.38 by Svacina, Parker Knipfer, Nathan Goehe and Peyton Hamm. This team's new time is 1:50.49 and they took 6th overall for 26 team points.
As was previously stated, Sophomore Travis Phillips re-broke both of his individual records in the 50 freestyle and the 100 butterfly to take Sectional 1st places and earn his berth at Friday's WIAA State Swim Meet in Madison, and Senior Kole Svacina re-broke his record in the 500 yard freestyle again on Saturday to a new best time of 5:13.52.

The 400 Freestyle Relay team of Svacina, Senior Tom Rieter, Sophomore Keaton Jed and Phillips went another school record time of 3:29.46 taking an additional 3.32 seconds off of their school record time from GNC Conference Meet last week of 3:32.78 to take 4th overall for 30 points. Again, like in Kole's 500 free we had visions of a state berth in the event, however the 16th seed and last team to make it into the meet was DeForest with a time of 3:28.66 and so both Pulaski in 3:29.08 who was 3rd at our meet and our Hatchet home team will not be able to swim the event again at the big meet.

Tomahawk's Travis Phillips will swim at state, with the Division Two action beginning on Friday, February 16 at 6:30 pm.


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