JASPER – Bedford North Lawerence’s Garrett Gabhart won two individual event titles, shattered a school record, and anchored a victorious relay during the IHSAA swimming sectional on Saturday.
Gabhart claimed the 100-yard butterfly and 100 backstroke, then teamed with Oliver Brown, Dustin Haltom and Carson Puckett to take the 400 freestyle relay. The winners in each event automatically qualified for the state championship prelims on Friday in Indianapolis.
Gabhart recorded amazing time drops in his races. In the butterfly, he was seeded second after Thursday’s prelim qualifiers, but he shaved almost four seconds off that time to win in 49.92, erasing the school record (51.00 by Andrew Swenson in 2020) and the sectional record. In the backstroke, as the top seed, he dropped four seconds while cruising to the title in 51.43.
“Well, no doubt the swim of the meet, and the year to this point, belongs to Garrett,” BNL coach Adam Young said. “We thought he might have a shot at the school record when we started the year. He blasted through that and the sectional record by over a second in a great battle with Jasper’s Grant Wehr.
“The sectional record was almost 30 years old. It was also really cool to have Andrew Swenson as a coach this year and on deck to kind of pass the torch. We will have to see what happened around the state to see where he will be seeded, but I think he should have a chance at medaling in both the fly and the back.”
The Stars were also faster in the relay. They knocked off 10 seconds from their seed time to win that event in 3:22.81.
“Overall the guys did phenomenal,” Young said. “They got every ounce out of themselves this weekend. The 400 relay was icing on the cake. Our middle legs of Carson and Dustin really put us in a position to win that, with Garret nailing it shut with an impressive anchor leg.
“This was a special group of guys and I am glad we could extend the season another week, because frankly I’m not ready to say goodbye to them quite yet. There’s no way to really describe the amount of improvement this group had as a whole this season.”
Jasper won the team while with 421 points, while BNL was second in the 15-team field with 327.
Gabhart and the relay team will compete in the prelims at IUPUI’s Natatorium. The top eight (among 32 competitors) will qualify for the state championship race on March 1, while qualifiers 9-16 will advance to the consolation races.
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