Split decision in the pool: Hatboro-Horsham girls, Souderton boys prevail
HORSHAM >> With the Hatboro-Horsham girls trailing Souderton Area 88-84 going into the final event of the evening, Hatters coach Kip Emig had one question for his 400-yard free relay team.
“I had the three seniors, really the leaders of the team — the captains, so they know what it takes. I knew I had some strength there,” Emig said. “And I asked them, ‘win it, tie it, how do you wanna do this?’ They were like, ‘we wanna win.’ And I said ‘let’s do this.’”
“I think, basically, we won it before it even started,” said freshman Vivi Vergara, “because we were all so excited to get in the water.”
The Hatters pulled through, taking the top two places in the event to surge past Big Red, 96-90, and earn Hatboro-Horsham its first victory over Souderton Area since 2005.
Said Emig: “We have a nice jolt of young talent. And you mix that with Arielle Hammer and Jessica Gutekunst, and those older girls, it’s just a nice mix right now.”
The Souderton Area boys were also victorious in the double dual meet, putting together a 107-78 win over the Hatters to climb to 2-0.
The Hatter girls (2-0) piled up points behind double victories from Haily Freed (200 IM/100 breast) and Vivi Vergara (50 free/100 free), and then had enough left to go one-two in the 400 free, the foursome of Ally Vergara, Kayla Ji, Gutekunst and Vivi Vergara touching first in 3:52.47.
“The girls team is looking pretty good this year,” Vivi Vergara said. “We have another good freshman, (500 free winner) Hannah Parker — she’s killing it in the distance. Jess, Arielle, my sister…just everyone is doing awesome this year and I think it’s looking really good.”
The Big Red boys swept the diving and pulled away further any time T.J. Yaglenski or Jake Kramer were in the water.
“We graduated Storm (Krader) last year and he was a state medalist,” Souderton coach Lou Williams said, “but we’ve got T.J. and Jake as seniors who have been to states and are well-versed swimmers and have been around for a while. So we love them in meets like this because they know how to race.”
Yaglenski won the 100 fly and 100 back, and Kramer did the honors in the 200 free and 500 free. Each were on the winning 200 medley and 400 free relays to bookend the meet.
“Great win. They’re a good team to swim against,” Kramer said. “In the 200, I felt really smooth. And then I saw (second-place) Stuart (Sumner of Hatboro-Horsham) next to me so I was like ‘okay, I gotta finish this.’ So I just took off at the end and it was a good battle between us.”
