Prep teams to hit water

PALMER — While basketball and volleyball squads tip things off with a preseason jamboree, and cross country running squads normally participate in an informal race, the local prep swimming and diving squads normally just jump right into their regular season schedule.

Not this year.

Dawn Brettrager and the Colony Knights have decided the swimmers and divers need a “jamboree” of their own. On Saturday, the Knights will host the first Colony Relays at the Palmer Pool.

“It’s something new we’re trying this year,” Brettrager, Colony’s seventh-year head coach, said on Wednesday. “something fun.”

Brettrager said the Relays —which will include the Palmer, Colony, Wasilla and Seward swimming programs — is patterned after meets that college swimming programs host. The meet will include a bevy of relays, in addition to a handful of individual events.

“Most of the events are different. We’ll mix it up and give kids lots of different swims,” Brettrager said.

The meet will include the 200-yard medley relay, a staple for swim meets, but the inaugural meet will also include freestyle, butterfly back stroke and breast stroke relays.

“We don’t normally do those,” Brettrager said. “But it’ll make it fun. We have lots of new kids, and this will give them lots of experience.”

Last season, Brettrager and the Knights started the year at a swim meet hosted by Lathrop High School in Fairbanks. But that event included just preliminary and final events.

“We hauled our kids up there and 80 percent of them didn’t get to swim (on the second day),” Brettrager said.

So rather that repeating that disappointment, the Knights wanted to create a meet that would give all of their athletes plenty of opportunity to swim.

“It’s about getting kids in the water, giving them a chance to swim and giving the coaches an idea where the kids are at,” Brettrager said.

The Relays will also include four 50-yard events — the freestyle, butterfly, back stroke and breast stroke. Normally, local programs have to wait until the Soldotna Pentathlon to compete in the 50-yard events, Brettrager said.

Brettrager said the inaugural Relays are slated to start a 9 a.m. on Saturday.

Contact Frontiersman sports editor Jeremiah Bartz at sports@frontiersman.com.