What a meet it was!

Thursday’s matchup at John Vanderzicht Memorial Pool between the always strong Shorecrest team and the up-and-coming Oak Harbor Wildcats ended in a situation that is not often seen in swimming:

The two teams battled to an 89-89 tie.

Last year Shorecrest soundly defeated the Wildcats who were somewhat apprehensive prior to the start of this year’s meet.

“They beat us last year, but

we’ve been doing good, really good,” said Wildcat coach Erica Miller. “We are 3-0 so far and we have a lot of really strong freshmen on the team this year. We’ll just have to see what happens.”

After a second-place finish in the 200-meter medley relay and a third-place in the 200 freestyle to open the meet, senior KeriAnne Wright got things going for Oak Harbor by winning the 200 individual medley in a time of 2:40.06.

“I was really happy to win,” she said. “It was a good time, not quite state, but it was one of my better individual medleys.”

The 200 individual medley was one of four first-place finishes for the versitale swimmer.

Wright also won the 100 butterfly and teamed with Kim Klieman, Rachel Weinstein and Carolyn

Vasquez to win the 200 freestyle

relay in a time of 2:02.12.

The key victory was Wright’s fourth event and with the meet on the line, she teamed with Tori Nickerson, Weinstein and Vasquez to capture the final contest, the 400 freestyle relay, in a clocking of 4:33.13.

“We were six points behind going into the final event and the 10 points we earned resulted in the tie,” coach Miller said. The team of Maddie Shipley, Lindsey Hall, McKenna Yockey and Lily

Doyle finished in third place.

Nickerson, a freshman, also had a good meet, winning the 50-meter freestyle in a time of 30.78.

“I won, but I thought that the other girls were going to beat me,” she said. “It was a really close race.”

Miller remarked that there was just six one-hundreths of a second between the first and third-place finishers.

“I was just glad I had a good race with these girls,” Nickerson said.

Klieman swam a time of 30.78

to finish third for the Wildcats.

“I did really bad and my flip was too slow, but I’ll do better next time,” she said.

Weinstein, yet another freshman, was an individual event winner capturing the 100 breaststroke in a time of 1:26.23.

Halfway through the meet, Miller said she would be happy if the team could “squeak this one out,” and the Wildcats nearly pulled it off.

“The girls wanted to win this one after losing to them last year, but I think they’re happy with getting the tie,” Miller said.