This last weekend the team headed to Northview for the 2022 OK White Conference Championship Meet. We started off the meet with Friday Prelims swimming multiple in season best times across the board. The divers came out strong as we headed into finals on Saturday! 

Saturday morning our A 200-medly relay of Carpenter/Hoekstra/Mills/Mills took 4th to kick start the meet for the Eagles. They dropped a second and a half from their seed time the day before and are currently ranked 3rd in state. Emily Hoekstra then took to the 200 free with an amazing swim taking 3rd in the event with a 1:56.59 — a 1.40 second time drop from the day before! Piper Sadowski and Maeve Harkness had excellent swims in the 200 free as well finishing 14th and 15th in the race. Veda Harkness continued to put in the work in the 200 IM dropping again from her prelim swim in the 200 IM as she touched in 10th place for the team! Katelyn Vander Heide touched in 10th and followed by Greta Vance closing out her final 200 IM in the conference final. A speedy 50 free wrapped up the first half of the meet as Grace Carpenter touched 3rd with a 24.72! Janie Mills continued to shave time finishing 11th and Emily Herman took on the C final for the Eagles. All 24 swimmers in the event finished within a 4 second time span of each other — way to be gritty with your swims! 

What a great dive meet as well for our team! Showing up to finals with the most athletes in our program's history. Natalie Wickstrom took 5th place followed by Emily Setlock in 6th and Ella Vandenberg in 8th. 3 divers in the top 8 is an incredible moment for this program! Lily McGowan finished in 12th followed by Lainy Vanderploeg. All of these divers will be headed to Hamilton on Thursday for Diving Regionals. 

The 100 fly started our swim portion again as Juliana Mills broke her minute time in the event finishing 3rd with a 59.66! Grace Carpenter came in 5th and Katelyn Vander Heide touched in 13th in the B final. Juliana is currently ranked 4th in the state followed by Grace Carpenter who is ranked 8th. Another splash and dash in the 100 free and Veda Harkness took 9th in the B final and Janie Mills took 11th! Lindsey Wierenga continued to drop time in the event as well, touching in the C final at a 59.71. 

A big end of season finish to our 500 freestylers as Piper Sadowski finished in 7th place! Ali Buist made it back, finishing in 16th and so did Lucy Molenbeek. Congrats to these 2 freshmen who made it back to finals in a new event for them both this year. Our 200 free relay continued to drop time as Carpenter/Mills/Harkness/Hoekstra touched the wall in 4th place. For extra context we swim in the fastest conference in the state of Michigan and are the only D3 team. Given their efforts, we currently sit second in the state for this relay and are a half second behind Holland Christian. 

Julianna Mills and Maeve Harkness took on the B final for the 100 back finishing in 12th and 16th place with great end of season swims both dropping time in this meet! Micah Heerema showed up as well for the Eagles! Emily Hoekstra was on fire as she touched 3rd in the 100 breast, shaving off some more time from her prelim swim! She is currently ranked 4th in the state. Kaylee Enders shaved off a little time as well finishing the race in 12th place. 

The meet ended with a fight for the finish as we competed for our final state relay. Across the board we had excellent swims and multiple girls under the minute barrier. Huge shout out to our B relay for your hard work in this event! The A relay of Harkness/Mills/Wierenga/Harkness touched the wall in 5th place. The relay is currently ranked 13th for state. 

Congrats to all our swimmers and divers this season and best of luck to those headed into state championship! The team ended the meet in 5th place this year.