Ladue Horton Watkins High School

The Ladue Rams Boys Swimming & Diving Team took the short trip to Clayton for the Suburban Red Conference meet this week. This meet featured 6 strong conference teams with 130 swimmers and divers, including the Rams, and is a stepping-stone to the upcoming State meet. The Rams are the regular-season conference champion with a 5-0 league mark but knew they were in a close contest with the Eureka Wildcats, who had topped the Rams at the Lindbergh Invitational a month prior. Overcoming a huge obstacle at the meet due to their top diver being unavailable due to injury, the Rams battled hard all the way and had leads at points during the meet. The Rams scored 403 team points, even higher than last year’s 369 points (which won the meet) but fell to Eureka who scored 420. You may think a 17-point loss is a lot, but in a championship-format meet scoring 16 places, 17 points is miniscule. It was a tough loss, but the Rams performed brilliantly all night, topping 3rd place Lindbergh by 59 points. Moreover, since 2022, the Rams have improved their team score each year – 115, 188, 208, 369 and now 403, a historic 5-year rise. It speaks volumes about the program and the dedicated swimmers and divers over that half-decade. The Rams started the meet with a bang, with their two divers – JR Brighton Westermayer and SO Caleb Strayhorn taking 3rd and 5th respectively. Both divers had season-best scores in the 11-dive format, 304.20 for Brighton and 258.30 for Caleb. That gave the Rams 30 team points, giving them a lead over Eureka with 20. Best of all, both scores are above the district qualification mark, so they will dive at Districts! This is a huge plus for the Rams. To start the swimming events, the Rams and Wildcats set the tone for the entire meet by racing each other in the 200 medley relay. Both teams went year-best times with Eureka winning by a mere 0.60 seconds. After that close shave, still ahead 64-60, the Rams kicked their swim game up a notch and utilized their terrific team depth to the fullest extent, leveraging their excellent performance in the prelims where they advanced three or four (the maximum) swimmers in every individual event save one, the 500 free. Only Eureka was close to the Rams on that metric. The Rams kept their point lead intact until the eighth event, the 500 free, when Eureka pulled ahead by 10 points and hung on from there. The Rams battled to the end, in truly a team effort! The Rams won only one event – a fantastic performance by SO Dravya Pradhan, winning the 200 IM by nearly four seconds over Eureka’s Brenden Henke - yet finished within 17 points, utilizing their fantastic team depth. The list of individual swim performances by the Rams in the championship format, 16-places- score meet is long and noteworthy. It is as follows: JR Kevin He (8th 200 free, 8th 100 free), SO Alvin He (11th 200 free, 9th 100 free), FR Reed Sehy (16th 200 free), FR Kelson Cui (5th 200 IM, 4th 100 breast), SR Sam Etherington (11th 200 IM, 9th 100 back), SO Jinghuan Xu (12th 200 IM, 8th 100 breast), SR co-captain Arlo Ziolkowski (5th 50 free, 4th 100 free), JR co-captain Kevin Wu (6th 50 free, 2nd 100 back), JR Eliot Levine (7th 50 free, 8th 100 fly), SO Max Bending (10th 50 free, 6th 100 free), FR Ray Blum (11th 100 fly), FR Teddy Levine (11th 500 free), and SR co-captain Frank Tian (11th 100 breast). Wow – what a list! In the relays, besides the aforementioned medley relay, the Rams free relays contributed mightily to the score, as relays count double. The Rams 200 free relay of Cui, Levine, He, and Bending took 3rd, and the 400 free relay of Ziolkowski, Pradhan, Kevin He and Wu took 2nd. The Rams improved on several of their existing State cuts, specifically Pradhan and Cui in the 200 IM (2:01.43, 2:10.03 respectively), Levine and Bending in the 50 free (23.49, 23.86), Levine and Blum in the 100 fly (57.22, 1:01.49), Bending in the 100 free (53.23), Etherington in the 100 back (1:01.27), and Cui and Xu in the 100 breast (1:04.15, 1:08.36). In addition, all three relays lowered their times – the 200 medley (1:41.63), 200 free (1:34.43) and the 400 free (3:25. 16). The medley and 400 free are 7th and 8th on the state list and the 200 free is 12th. Quite the haul of state cuts for the Rams! The Rams now head into the State meet with a team of 12 swimmers and 2 divers, with 10 swimmers having at least one state cut plus two alternates, along with all three relays. The divers will compete at the district level on Saturday November 7th, with the top 8 making it to State. The Rams finish their so-far-remarkable season on Friday, November 13th and Saturday, November 14th at the Class 1 State Championships, held at the Rec-Plex in St. Peters. See the Ladue Activities website for details. GO RAMS!