Central freshman Gramling captures two top-16 finishes

Central freshman Sam Gramling reached a pair of consolation finals in the high school boys swimming state championships in St. Peters, Mo.

Gramling's best finish was an 11th in the 500-yard freestyle. He finished with a time of 4 minutes, 51.39 seconds in the finals, which was more than a second faster than the time he posted Friday in the preliminaries.

The top eight swimmers from Friday's prelims qualified for Saturday's championship finals with the next eight swimming in the consolation set.

Gramling had qualified 10th on Friday.

He also qualified for the 200 freestyle and ended up finishing 15th in 1:50.33.

Gramling was the only freshmen swimming in the finals of his events.

Central junior Peyton Waggener added a 15th-place finish in the 100 breaststroke with a time of 1:02.96.

In Friday's prelims, Central's 200-yard medley relay team of Gramling, Waggener and seniors Hunter Givens and Jake Meyer had finished 17th, just one spot from the consolation finals. The same foursome was 22nd in the 400 free relay.

Central finished tied for 33rd in the team standings with 10 points, tripling its team score from the previous season.

"We swam great and the times came down," Powell said. "The meet was just so fast, it's hard to get in that top eight."

Notre Dame's best preliminary showing was a 24th-place finish by the 200 freestyle team of senior Jordan Voss, senior Edward Doyle, sophomore Jacob Buckenmeyer and sophomore Logan Bollinger.