On Saturday evening, the Patrick Henry swim teams got in a quick senior night tune-up for the Central Region meet when they faced off against Goochland. Thought the Bulldogs are members of Group A, the two teams matched up fairly well in a highly competitive meet.

  Being as neither PH or Goochland field a large team the meet was a quick workout and wrapped up the final event after one hour and 15 minutes. The Patriots girls claimed victory 123-39 while the Patrick Henry boys edged out Goochland 87-60.

  Patriots head coach Bob Flanagan was pleased with the outcome. “They did very well,” he said of his swimmers. “The seniors got to do what strokes they enjoyed the best and because of that did very well. And we got to see from a couple of our underclassmen who had not been able to swim some events and were able to step and did well likewise.”
 
  Patrick Henry’s Miranda Menk claimed the 200 Free and 100 Fly for the girls while teammate Logan Harrington picked up dual wins in the 100 Free and 100 Breast. Reihl Meade took the 50 Free, Julia Chambers the 100 Back to go along with the 200 Medley Relay (Chambers, Lindsey Anderson, Menk and Harrington), 200 Free Relay (Madeline Montgomery, Morgaine Goettl-Meyer, Malik Taylor and Hallie Blevins, Hallie) and 400 Free Relay (Montgomery, Chambers, Taylor Evko and Anderson) titles.
 
  For the boys got a diverse performance. Chris Rothlisberger took the 200 Free, Thomas Perkins the 200 IM, Jesse Artiglia the 50 Free and Clay Neal the 100 Free to go along with titles in the 200 Free Relay (Clay Neal, Rothlisberger, T-Jud Hatz, T-Jud and Perkins) and the 200 Medley Relay (Neal, Kyle Koren, Perkins and Hatz).

  For Flanagan, the final outcome of the meet was not as important as individual accomplishments. “We had goals set for each and every one of them and thankfully they were for the most part meeting those goals,” he said.

  The two weeks between now and the February 11 Regionals at NOVA will be a period of fine tuning for the Patriots.
 
  “There’s always something to work on, always something we can do better,” Flanagan said. “Some of it will be working on their energy levels, over the last couple of weeks you’ll end up altering practices so hopefully they’re at a heightened state come that last meet , but in the meantime because we have this duration to focus on one meet, we’re able to specialize and really pinpoint their strokes. So the butterflyers, break them out and really work on their starts and their turns and backstrokers, breaststrokers, freestylers. This is the best point for us to fine tune strokes.”
 
Flanagan does not like to highlight individual performances but feels his team has the talent to make some noise at the regional meet. “We have several people that have a possibility (of moving on to states) but I’ll just have to wait and see at the regionals who’s able to do it,” he said.