Patriots pulverize

While the girls picked up a win on Tuesday, neither of the Patriots teams felt quite satisfied with how they opened up in 2025.

Two days later, they turned the page in dominant fashion.

The Jay County High School swim teams utilized their depth to pulverize both the Celina Bulldogs and Coldwater Cavaliers on Thursday in the second meet following a 10-day gap over winter break.

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Jay County swim vs. Celina and Coldwater (1/9/2025)

The meet was scored as if it were two head-to-head matchups for each team. The biggest margin of victory came from the Patriot boys whooping Coldwater 145-40. JCHS also took down Celina 135-66, while the Bulldogs bested Coldwater 76-42.

The girls team beat Celina 152-72, while defeating Coldwater 134-75. (Coldwater’s girls bested Celina 91-86.)

“We had a rough start to the week, so they responded really well mentally to be able to get up for this meet,” said JCHS coach Matt Slavik, whose team split with Bellmont on Tuesday. “It’s always fun having a cross-boarder kind of competition. …

“The biggest thing I noticed tonight over any other swims is having fun. It’s a grind. We’re at school a lot over break and there’s a lot of training going on and a lot of tired people. So, it’s just exciting to see how well they swam tonight.”

The boys team (4-5) bounced back after losing to Bellmont by 20 points on Tuesday. Jay County claimed victories in half of the events, and earned second place in the six races they didn’t win.

Freshman Carson Westgerdes put together one of the strongest performances, winning the 200-yard freestyle with a time of 2 minutes, 4.25 seconds, and the 100 breaststroke in 1:13.44. Other individual victories came from Peyton Yowell in the 100 freestyle (56.41 seconds) and Bryden Carter in the 1-meter diving (161.65).

After not claiming any of the relays against the Braves —including losing the 200 freestyle relay by 0.07 seconds  — JCHS got two wins from relays. Matthew Fisher, Westgerdes, Cooper Glentzer and Yowell teamed up to open the meet with a win in the 200 medley relay (1:52.43) and Lincoln Clamme replaced Fisher on the winning 400 freestyle relay team (3:49.36).

“It felt really good because last meet on Tuesday, we didn’t win any relays,” Westgerdes said. “It was a great bounce back to come back and win both of those.”

The girls team (6-3) found similar success with six first-place finishes and six runners-up.

Maddy Snow  — one of six seniors honored during the meet  —started Jay County off with a win in the diving after amassing 188.35 points. Fellow senior Aubrey Millspaugh also claimed a top finish in the 50 freestyle, hitting the wall in just 28.91 seconds.

“The seniors got to pick our events for tonight,” said Millspaugh. “I’d like to get better at my sprints so I thought ‘Let’s go for it and see what I can do.’

“It was really exciting because it was one of the first events I’ve won this year, so to get another on senior night was really special. It was also my first time going under 29 seconds without being in a tech suit, so that was exciting.”

Other top individual finishes came from Brooklynn Byrum in the 200 freestyle (2:21.09) and Avery Wentz in the 100 backstroke (1:11.64).

The girls also had a pair of relays that finished first. Wentz, Lauren Fisher, Byrum and Sophia Hoevel combined to swim a 2:06.62 in the 200 medley relay, while Kaitlyn Fisher replaced Wentz in the 200 freestyle relay (1:54.46).

While winning six events each went a long way for the Patriots, their depth secured the victories over Celina and Coldwater. JCHS took second in 16 events, including all 12 events it didn’t win, and third in eight races.

“The key for us to be successful is having kids finishing in the top four spots and they came through tonight,” Slavik said. “Having a little bit more depth than the teams coming here worked to our advantage tonight. There have been a couple of meets where it didn’t really work to our advantage because they’ve had more depth.

“It was nice to see, as far as our depth, we had about 78% (of swimmers hitting) season best times. The biggest ones coming from our third and fourth-place finishing kids, so it was a great night as far as that goes.”