Members of EHS swim team compete in (TISCA) State Championship meet

Published 10:02 am Tuesday, February 21, 2023

Five members of the Elizabethton High School swim team traveled to Knoxville for the weekend to compete in the Tennessee Interscholastic Swim Coaches Association (TISCA) State Championship meet.  Six other members of the team earned the travel trip to support the competitors as they joined 900 swimmers from across the state to compete.  The additional 300 to 400 support staff, including officials, coaches, security personnel, and timers, meant there were approximately 1,300 people on the deck of the University of Tennessee’s Allan Jones Aquatic Center for the preliminary sessions each day of the meet.

Starting the meet for the Cyclones on Friday morning were the boys’ 200 Medley relay team of Morgan Roszel, Liam Cannon, RJ Brewer, and Kody Broussard.  Roszel swam the lead-off backstroke leg of the relay in one of his best times of the season, a 27.75, to give Cannon a jump-start for the breaststroke.  Brewer followed with Butterfly in a personal best split of 26.11 to give Broussard a good position to anchor with the Freestyle in a split of 23.19.  While the team added fourteen-hundredths of a second to their previous best time, they jumped up five places to 32^nd in the event.

The individual events started with eleven heats of the 200 Freestyle in which both Broussard and Roszel were entered.  Broussard went first, dropping 4.79 seconds for a time of 1:52.56, just 39 hundredths of a second off the school record, which bumped him up 27 places for 42^nd in the field.  Roszel followed with an improvement of 2.45 seconds on his previous time, bumping him up twelve spots to place 43^rd.  The only girl from the team to compete in the meet, Cadie Digby followed the boys with the shortest race of the meet, the 50 Freestyle.  Digby broke the school record, improving on her season’s best with a 25.04, placing her twentieth.  Friday’s last swim for the team was performed by Brewer in the 100 Butterfly.  Brewer dropped 1.91 seconds and jumped up sixteen places for 54^th with a time of 57.10.

Digby started Saturday’s competition with a solid race in the 100 Freestyle.  Her time of 56.67 was just 15 hundredths of a second from her personal best and placed her 40^th in the largest field of any event in the meet.   Brewer, Broussard and Roszel followed next in the 500 Freestyle, the longest event of the meet.  Brewer turned in a time of 5:25.25, dropping 9.63 seconds from his previous best time, jumping him 17 places in the standings to place him 62^nd.  Broussard swam a time of 5:06.67, dropping 21.34 seconds from his season’s best time and improving his placement from 65^th to 37^th.  Roszel was last to swim the distance event, clocking a 5:04.59, improving his time by 1.70 seconds and placing him 34^th in the field.

The boys then rejoined for the 200 Freestyle relay.  Broussard entered the water first and split a State qualifying time of 23.75 to start the boys at the front of the heat.  Roszel swam next in a personal best split of 24.26 to give the boys the lead.  Brewer entered the water third to split a personal best time of 24.96 and maintain their position at the front of the field.  Swimming the anchor leg, Cannon also split a personal best time of 26.99 and touched the wall for third in the heat.  Their finishing time of 1:39.96 was 2.79 seconds faster than their previous best time and just 95 hundredths of a second from the school’s record.  The final event of the meet for the team was the 100 Breaststroke in which Cannon touched the wall in a 1:08.90, just four hundredths from his season’s best time.  He jumped up four places in the standings to 83^rd.

“We had a really successful meet,” stated head coach Kelli Broussard.  “My goal at the state meet is to place in the top fifty percent of the field because the competition is so tough.”  High school swimming in the state is not divided into divisions as other sports are.  The result is a competition of the best of the best, including large and small, private and public schools.  “Six of our nine swims finished in the top forty-five percent.  Our highest finish was at 22 percent.  This success just makes me more excited to see what will happen next season,” said Broussard.

Swimmers now have the opportunity to continue swimming with the Typhoons Swim Club, a summer league that began practicing year-round in 2021.  For more information on that program, please contact the Community Involvement Director, Forrest Holt, at (423) 547-8015 ext. 1525 or find them on Facebook.  Community Involvement also runs a swimming lesson program for kids ages 5 to 18 beginning in March through July.