Dunwoody swimmers used their trademark consistency in Saturday's Class A-AAAA swim meet at Georgia Tech.
Despite no event finish higher than Tom Reuning's ninth-place effort in the 100-yard butterfly, the Wildcat boys and girls still captured 15th of 47 teams and 24th of 39 squads, respectively, behind boys champion Wesleyan and girls titlist Marist.
"Again, I felt like we were one of the strongest public-school teams," Wildcats coach Rae Colley said of her 14 swimmers.
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Reuning, who last year clocked a school-record time of 52.59 seconds in the 100 butterfly preliminaries and eventually finished sixth in 52.78, slimmed that with a ninth-place 51.55 Saturday. He also finished 12th in the 50 freestyle in 22.19, and keyed Dunwoody's 11th- and 13th-place endings in the 400 freestyle relay and 200 freestyle relays, respectively. He teamed with B.J. Janas, Jonny Slimming and Matt Kiser to swim 3:22.82 in the longer relay and with Janas, Kiser and John Hicks to reach a 1:31.66 in the shorter one.
Reuning was pleased to swim the fifth-fastest final time overall and by resetting his school record in his final high school meet.
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"I've been training really hard," he said. "Everyone was going so fast this meet, and I was so psyched up, I was just able to drop that time.
"Getting in the top eight would have been good," he added, "but I was still pleased."
Dunwoody's girls were sparked by Shawn Pyne, who took 16th in the 50 freestyle (25.53) and anchored the Wildcats' 12th-place 200 freestyle relay (1:44.63) and 14th-place 400 freestyle relay (3:51.10). The longer relay with Stephanie Stadnick, Maggie Joyce and Bekah Passow was more than four seconds faster than the 3:55.37 Pyne clocked with Stadnick, Joyce and Linsay Calderella to end Lakeside's string of 14 county meet championships two weeks earlier.
The 200 relay tied a school record Pyne set last year with Sara McMahon, Joyce and Calderella, but the 400 relay pleased Pyne more.
"That (400 relay) keeps making us really happy," Pyne said. "We dropped about five seconds at county, and to drop another four at state was great."
Dunwoody's boys and girls considered it unlikely they'd emerge event champions for the first time since Justin Wingo in 2000 and Natanya Harper in '03. Instead, dropping times was the focus. And of the seven finals Dunwoody was in, six were personal bests.
"Times this year were freakishly fast," Colley said of the meet's four state records. "It seemed every time I turned abound, they were calling out a new state record."
