Six Lady Dogies Power Newcastle to 134 Points at Conference Meet

NEWCASTLE, Wyo. - Lady Dogies’s six-member squad scored 134 points to finish fifth at the 3A Absaraka Girls Conference swimming and diving meet Friday, Oct. 23, and Saturday, Oct. 24, in Douglas. Every Lady Dogie advanced to Saturday’s finals in at least one individual event. Buffalo High School won with 408.5 points, followed by Douglas High School with 266.5, Rawlins High School with 192 and Worland High School with 168. Conference and pool records fell during a fast meet contested in short-course meters.

Allie Lunstra led Newcastle with two runner-up finishes, completing the 200-meter freestyle in 2:24.43 and the 100-meter butterfly in 1:16.81. The junior earned the top butterfly seed with a 1:15.33 preliminary swim, but a shoulder tweak at the 50-meter mark slowed the second half of the final. Buffalo’s Vyolet Gripp won in 1:11.75 after dropping nearly four seconds from preliminaries. Lunstra lowered season bests by five seconds in both events over the weekend, and both finals swims met the 3A state qualifying standards. Lunstra contributed 26 individual points.

Shelby Smith earned a first conference podium finish by moving from sixth in preliminaries to fifth in the 200-meter individual medley final in 2:59.66. Smith’s preliminary time of 2:58.92 was a personal best, an eight-second improvement that added the event to Smith’s state slate. Another personal record came in the 100-meter breaststroke, where Smith finished eighth in 1:38.24, cutting five seconds from the previous best. Those two finishes supplied 15 team points.

Madalyn Francis also reached the conference podium for the first time, placing sixth in 1-meter diving with 241.70 points through 11 dives after totaling 181.45 through the first eight. Francis added a ninth-place finish in the 50-meter freestyle in 33.33 seconds. A season-best 32.72 in preliminaries brought Francis within half a second of the state qualifying mark. Diving and freestyle combined for 13 individual points.

Macy Steber finished eighth in the 100-meter freestyle in 1:13.70, improving by 0.14 seconds from preliminaries despite slipping one place from the seventh seed. Steber also took 10th in the 50-meter freestyle in 33.37 after a 32.82 preliminary swim that was about half a second shy of state qualification. Natalie Dean made a first individual finals appearance, placing 12th in the 100-meter freestyle in 1:27.97. The sophomore’s 1:27.27 preliminary swim lowered Dean’s personal best by half a second.

Lillian Lopez won the 100-meter backstroke consolation final to finish seventh overall in a personal-best 1:27.11. Lopez cut four seconds from the previous best and finished 10 seconds ahead of eighth place, earning seven points. Combined with Steber’s eight points and Dean’s one, those performances helped Newcastle reach 70 points in individual events.

Three relay finishes supplied the remaining 64 points. Francis, Dean, Smith and Lunstra placed fourth in the 200-Meter Relay in 2:19.86 after swimming 2:16.21 in preliminaries, earning 22 points. Steber, Dean, Lopez and Francis added 20 points with fifth in the 200-Meter Relay in 2:51.96. In the 400-Meter Relay, Steber, Lopez, Smith and Lunstra cut their time from 5:05.36 in preliminaries to 5:03.15 in the final. Worland moved ahead of the third-seeded Lady Dogies, leaving Newcastle fourth with another 22 points.