Platte County senior Ashleigh Cruce and junior Ronnie Benford made a pair of consolation finals each and led a strong showing of top-16 finishers in this past weekend’s KC Classic at Gladstone Community Center. The Pirates scored 24 points and were 16th out of 20 teams in another exceedingly strong field.
Cruce continued a strong season and seemingly already locked in a third straight year where she will qualify for the Class 1 MSHSAA Swimming and Diving Championships. She placed 13th in the 100-meter butterfly at 1 minutes, 3.86 seconds in Saturday’s finals after qualifying in the same spot during Friday’s preliminaries while posting the current No. 23 time in Class 1 (1:03.51).
In addition, Cruce came in 16th in the 100 breaststroke at 1:17.00 after posting a slower time in preliminaries but qualifying 15th.
Benford placed 16th in both the 200 IM and 500 freestyle. She benefitted from three scratches in the first event and posted a season-best 2:30.87 in the consolation final while going from the No. 14 qualifying mark in the 500 freestyle at 6:06.26 to 6:17.31 in Saturday’s race.
Platte County junior Mackenzie Johnson recorded a career-best 1:05.71 in the 100 backstroke in the preliminaries — the current No. 28 time in Class 1 — and went into the consolation final seeded 12th. She ended up 16th at 1:07.56.
While members of the relay teams weren’t available in the results, Platte County didn’t have any season bests but made the top 16 in all three. The 400 freestyle relay qualified 12th (4:07.20) and held that spot in the finals with a slower time (4:08.322). The Pirates’ 200 medley relay was also faster in prelims (2:04.05) than the final (2:06.04) but also finished 14th in both.
Platte County’s 200 freestyle relay qualified 13th in preliminaries at 1:55.21 but ended up disqualified in the consolation final, costing the Pirates’ team points.
A week after not scoring any team points in the COMO Invitational, Platte County again saw the quality of opposition in the KC Classic. Remi Woolard, a freshman, posted the No. 39 state qualifying mark in the 200 freestyle (2:10.01), while Johnson nabbed the No. 44 spot (2:10.75), but neither placed int he top 16.
Belton Mini Meet
Platte County finished first in a field of six teams Wednesday at Belton High School in Belton with 509 points, while Summit Christian came in second at 343 1/2.
With just four event victories, Platte County did the damage with depth and didn’t have any state consideration cuts with most swimmers in off events and no first-place relays. Woolard won both the 200 IM (2:34.14) and 500 freestyle (6:00.75, less than a half a second off of a qualifying mark).
The other event winners were junior Alex Yurko (100 butterfly, 1:11.59) and Cruce (200 freestyle, 2:24.22) with senior Erin Anderson second to her in that event (2:27.19).
