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Published Friday, February 10, 2012 in Sports

Dean, state swimming qualifiers hoping to peak at right time today

By Chris Goltermann

The Newnan Times-Herald

Time and competitive swimming go hand-in-hand. But it also takes the right timing to be successful at the GHSA State Swimming Championships, which begin with today's preliminaries at Georgia Tech.

East Coweta senior Michael Dean feels he might just be on that kind of pace.

"The last couple of meets, I've done pretty good," said the Indian, one of a large list of county swimmers competing in either Class AAAAA or AAAA-A state meets today among all three of Coweta's public schools.

"I don't know," he continued. "Maybe I haven't peaked yet."

It may be the identical hope of all of today's local swimmers. Included in the mix are all six East Coweta relays, three each among boys and girls in Class AAAAA. Joining Dean individually among boys is sophomore standout Nick Hogsed, who will swim in the 500-yard freestyle and 200 individual medley, after earning state marks in all eight potential events.

Lady Indians qualifiers, in addition to relay swimmers, include individual swims today by juniors Kelsey Taliaferro and Ashley Delgado.

Northgate also qualified all six of its boys and girls relays. Freshmen Justin Moore and Delaney Wallace will also swim individually in respective boys and girls preliminaries.

Newnan qualified both of its 200 freestyle relays in addition to senior Zach Ponce in the boys 100 breaststroke.

Dean's qualifying 50-yard freestyle time of 23.25 came with two weeks left in the regular season and was tops among all local athletes in what is the 100-meter dash of high school swimming.

While it may be unlikely for the senior to sprint his way into Saturday's finals -- considering six Class AAAAA boys entries all have times under 22 seconds this year -- Dean has his sights set on supplanting his name to East Coweta record books, which have gone through a serious re-write this year.

"When you're a freshman you think getting to state is the only thing, but it's more about just improving yourself," he said. "I'm going to do my best. That's the main goal. I think I'm something like six hundredths (of a second) away."

In addition to swimming the 50-yard sprint in the free, Dean continued to compete in the long distance 500-yard event, which turned out to pay dividends in his qualifying for state. Through swimming in the longer 10-lap freestyle, Dean was able to make adjustments to technique that he incorporated later in the year.

"It was probably the ninth or tenth (meet) when we started to realize that I had a chance to make the fifty (freestyle) at state," said Dean, who also attributed some of his improvement to "a bit of a growth spurt."

Dean, a part of ECHS's relay qualifiers in years past, follows a long line of standout Indians swimmers that have recently included Nick Diaz, older brother Weston, Trevor Bachman, Jake O'Brien and Jamie Wright among others.

"I guess you can say it's gone up and down," Dean said of the success following years of practices in the wee hours of the morning and late evening. "This last year we've been doing really good. (But) I'm not going to miss all those early practices."

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