Souderton swims to wins over Central Bucks South

FRANCONIA >> After five events Friday, the Souderton Area girls had fallen behind Central Bucks South, but Big Red wasn’t rattled.

They just put in twice the work in the 200-yard freestyle relay.

“Alexa Crossgrove did a great job anchoring the B relay — so good,” said Big Red senior Jenny Rogers. “Getting first and second in that event just helped us gain confidence to win the meet. And it put us all in a good mindset.”

Souderton’s first- and second-place finish in the free relay sent the Big Red girls onto a 100-86 victory over the Titans while the Souderton boys also took care of business, winning 101-85 in the Suburban One League Continental Conference clash.

Both Souderton squads raised their record to 2-0 in the conference.

“A great start,” Indians coach Rob Faccenda. “We’re coming off really hard training over the break and the kids are a little tired but they really swam well, gave us a great effort.”

After diving, the Souderton girls won five straight events, including the free relay, where a team of Jordyn Grossman, Frankie Ferlick, K.K. Hershey and Rogers finished with a winning time of 1:44.31. The B relay foursome of Lael Flores, Alexis Krebs, Clara Burrell and Crossgrove hustled to 1:46.58, nudging South by seven hundredths of a second.

“The meet was really close at that point and we really needed it,” Faccenda said. “Clara and Alexa stepped up to get second, and that was the meet for the girls, getting one-two there. It was a great team effort to be able to do that.”

The medley relay provided an early jump, with Hailey Freed, Burrell, Rogers and Ferlick teaming up for a first-place time of 1:50.75.

“Everyone was tired coming in but it felt good to put a win under our belt,” Rogers said of the medley.

Wins by Freed (50 free/100 back), Ferlick (100 fly), Rogers (100 free) and Crossgrove (500 free) helped cement the win for Souderton. The Big Red boys swept the relays and got a pair of wins each from Storm Krader (200 free/100 free) and T.J. Yaglenski (100 fly/100 back) in pushing past South.

“We’re in as good a place as we’ve been. We’re really excited — the kids are working hard,” Faccenda said. “We’re optimistic about the rest of the season and where we’re gonna end up so we’re in a really good place right now.

“We have North Penn on Tuesday which is certainly gonna be a challenge for us, but we’re gonna go in and swim hard and hope that they have great swims like we’re gonna have great swims and it should be fun.”