Eyes on the prize

Anne Vormohr left the state finals last season with a feeling of disappointment.
She has no intention of allowing that to happen again.
Vormohr is targeting her second career state medal, and she fully expects to have teammates competing along side her Saturday.
Jay County High School’s Sophie Bader, Katy Smeltzer, Alex Bader and Vormohr will compete in eight events at the IHSAA Girls Swimming and Diving State Finals at Indiana University Natatorium in Indianapolis. It’ll take a top 16 finish to advance to Saturday’s competition, top eight to earn a state medal.
“They set lofty goals based on swimming super fast last weekend,” said JCHS coach Matt Slavik of the quartet that led the Patriots to their first sectional title Saturday. “I think they’re ready to go faster.
“It’s been a dream year, and we don’t want the dream to end yet.”
The dream for Friday is best times in every event, six berths in Saturday’s finals and consolation finals and at least one state medal, if not more.
And it has been on their minds since the beginning of the season.
The Patriots changed their training this year to focus on the state finals.
They’ve swam more yards.
Faster yards.
And, most importantly, purposeful yards.
“I got away from just doing yardage to do yardage,” said Slavik. “It had to be quality sets. Every practice was extremely focused.
“From top to bottom early on, the girls realized that they could train at a higher level and still do it. They got less rest and had more intensity.”
As the only female swimmer in school history to ever stand on the medal stand, Vormohr represents the Patriots’ best chance to be there again this year.
Vormohr earned her medal during her freshman season, swimming to a top-eight finish during the preliminary round of the 100-yard backstroke. She went on to place fifth in the state in 56.29 seconds.
But a year ago, she missed the championship heat of her signature event and ended up in 12th place. And she came up short of swimming in the consolations of the 100-yard freestyle by just six hundredths of a second.
“I’m nervous that it’s going to happen again, but in the back of my mind I know I’ve trained harder,” said Vormohr.
The junior enters the meet as the No. 8 seed in the 100 backstroke and No. 10 in the 50 freestyle based on sectional times.
In the former, she’s 0.15 seconds ahead of ninth-seeded Cara Kroeger of Chesterton. In the latter, she’s a mere 10th of a second from the top eight.
And that’s the goal, to walk away with a medal, or two, hanging around her neck.
“That would be … I don’t even know how to put it into words,” Vormohr said. “It’s more than exciting. … That would just be the experience of a lifetime.”

Vormohr has been the lone Patriot swimmer to advance to Saturday’s competition the last couple of years, but the team has several opportunities to break that trend this time around. Both JCHS relays are seeded in the top 16, as are the Bader sisters in one event apiece.
Alex Bader owns the No. 12 seed in the 100 breaststroke after finishing second in the sectional to South Adams’ Cady Farlow, the No. 7 seed. She hopes to knock more than a half second off of her sectional time in an effort to vault into the top eight.
“It just seems unreal,” said the freshman, who is also seeded 31st in the 200 freestyle. “There are so many fast people out there. It’s just so hard to think of even coming close to being up there with them.”
After finishing 22nd in the state in the 100 butterfly last season, Sophie Bader has herself set up in the top 16. Her school-record sectional time of 56.88 has her in the No. 15 spot with the next 11 swimmers less than a second behind.
She’s set a target time of 55.79, knowing that the state meet was lightning fast last year — 16th place was 57.15 seconds compared to 58.31 in 2013 — and may get even faster this time around.
“It would have proved that my hard work and determination this season have definitely paid off,” said the junior, who is also seeded 23rd in the 200 individual medley, of earning the chance to swim Saturday. “Last year I was really close … Just seeing that the times keep getting faster and faster and faster is just unbelievable and it pushes me to work even harder.”
Jay County’s 200 medley relay team finished three seconds faster at the sectional meet than it did at last season’s state meet, where it came up just short of the consolation finals with an 18th-place finish. That time was good enough for the No. 12 seed this time around.
Perhaps the tightest battle of the evening will come in the 200 freestyle relay, where Jay County is seeded 13th. Less than seven tenths of a second separate the No. 8 and 16 seeds in that event.
As she enters the final high school meet of her career, Smeltzer relishes the opportunity to earn the right to swim with her relay teammates just one more day.
“It would be really special. I’m coming to the realization that this is probably one of the last times I’m going to swim with these girls,” she said. “That just makes me tear up thinking about it.
“I’m just going to go out, do my best, do my part in the relays, try my hardest with the idea in mind that this could be the last time I swim at the Nat …
“It would just mean the world to be able to come back on Saturday. At the beginning of the season, I didn’t even consider that as a goal, and to be able to have that in reach is so exciting.”