The Hatchets swimmers ended their season short of the state meet, but it wasn’t for lack of effort.

“Our Division 2 Sectional got considerably faster this year, just as the Wisconsin Valley Conference did last week,” THS coach Marion Kohl said. “Taking that into account, we’re pretty thrilled overall to have scored our 112 points. One of our team goals for Sectionals was to swim at least 75% personal bests. We did much better than that; 12 out of 14 of our individual swims were personal bests, plus all three of our relays did better than their seed times by at least 2 1/5 seconds, bringing our time drop percentage to 88% overall! In total, the boys dropped 26.14 seconds overall in this meet alone!”

The Hatchets ranked 9th of 10 teams with 112 points, trailing Rhinelander (144) but beating out Medford (73). Ashwaubenon topped River Falls 394-348 for first.

The 200 medley team of Alex Tollison, Mason Brown, John Lazarz and Joe Nettesheim cut nearly three seconds from last year’s sixth-place finish to 2:00.48 but ranked 8th. Lazarz matched his 8th in the 200 IM with a time of 2:17.52, compared to 2:20.65.

Other point-scoring performances included: the 400 free (Nettesheim, Vic Ierulli, Tollison, Lazarz, 8th, 3:58.78); Lazarz (9th, 100 fly, 1:04.47); Ierulli (10th, 500 free, 6:31.73/11th, 200 free, 2:18.89); the 200 free (Tollison, Brown, James Leet, Ierulli, 10th, 1:54.33); Nettesheim (11th, 100 free, :55.69/ 12th, 50 free, :24.69); Leet (12th, 500 free, 7:06.26); Brown (14th, 100 brea, 1:20.41); and Tollison (15th, 100 back, 1:11.94).