Boys swimming: Go senior swimmers!
Jan. 21—OTTUMWA — Rece Budde always has fun on Senior Night.
From the handshakes and hugs to the final leaps into the pool with teammates, coaches and managers at the end of the night, there's plenty of fun memories that Ottumwa High School swimmers like Budde have made over the past four years. Budde was one of six seniors honored on Thursday as the Bulldogs competed for the final time this season inside the Mike McWilliams competition pool, earning one final CIML Metro dual win over Des Moines East (66-28) along with a 63-29 non-conference win over Centerville.
Budde has been part of 20 dual wins over the past two years as a member of the OHS boys swimming program. Winning any dual as an underclassmen would have been quite an achievement for a Bulldog team that was high on talent, but low on overall numbers.
"We had a really small team during my sophomore season," Budde recalled. "We struggled to win meets. We struggled to put together quality relays. It's crazy because we've got a really big team this year. I'm so happy to see that kind of growth.
"It's crazy to this will be my last year swimming. I've been swimming for a very long time. I've got conference, districts and hopefully state to look forward to. It's definitely emotional."
Budde, Carson Shively, Luis Garcia, Carter Thompson, Owen Tanner and Trey Hull were all honored during the final home meet of the season for the Ottumwa boys. As is custom on Senior Night for the Ottumwa swimmers, the final race of the night saw the seniors come together to swim in teams during the 400 free relay.
Ottumwa head coach Cherie Langland, however, did have to get creative in putting the teams together due to the specific number of seniors.
"Because we had six seniors, we had to find two more kids that could fill in the gaps," Langland said. "Being a team captain, Cason Palm was a pretty obvious choice. Nathan Calhoun has also trained with us since seventh grade, so he was the other natural choice to be a part of that relay. He's trained all four years with those boys."
Calhoun, Hull, Budde and Shively beat the team of Palm, Thompson, Tanner and Garcia with a time of 4:08.17, finishing second overall in the race to Centerville teammates Jobie Smith, Justin Walker, John White and Brady Belloma. The Big Reds posted a winning time of 4:03.33, closing out a successful week for the program that began on Monday by winning the program's first ever home swimming meet.
"We always kind of consider Ottumwa a big part of our program. Before we had a program of our own, this is where our swimmers came to compete at," Centerville head boys swimming coach Amber White said. "Hopefully, we can see the same kind of growth with our program that Ottumwa's had."
Centerville gave Des Moines East a battle for the third dual decision of the night, coming up just six points short of the Scarlets (49-43) despite having just eight swimmers. White added wins for Centerville (4-5) in both the 50-yard freestyle (22.8) and 100-yard freestyle (51.68) as the Big Reds beat East in seven of the nine varsity races in which the teams went head-to-head.
"This is our third year even having a team. We had just four swimmers during that first year," Amber White said. "We just kind of keep adding them. I've got 55 swimmers in our YMCA program. The plan is to just keep feeding that program into the high school team and keep growing our numbers that way."
White shared a final handshake with Shively after winning the 100 freestyle by less than a second in a battle of South Central Conference swimmers. Shively, who has won state cross-country and track medals running at Davis County, would consider it a lofty goal to achieve in winning a state swimming medal competing for Ottumwa this season.
"I'm just focusing on continuing to drop time and work hard," Shively said. "It's been so interesting being part of this program. I've been able to meet so many different people swimming for Ottumwa. We've ran track meets against Fairfield over the past three years in which I've seen some of my buddies from this team. Same thing goes when we run against Ottumwa. We get to catch up with each other on how the school year is going.
"It's been great to make those new connections with so many great people. I'm definitely going to miss this, but I already promised some of the young guys I'll be back to watch a few meets next year."
— Scott Jackson can be reached at sjackson@ottumwacourier.com. Follow him on Twitter@CourierScott.
