• Photo Showcase: Girls state swimming, Feb. 24
• Results: State finals, consolation qualifiers
• Watch Live: Get live streaming video of Saturday's finals

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LINCOLN — Friday's preliminaries at the 39th girls state swimming championships set up a team title chase that will require fans to pay attention to every race.

Not just the championship races. The consolation races also will play a big role in determining if Millard West will win its fifth consecutive title or if Omaha Westside leaves the Devaney Center with the championship trophy for the first time since 1996.

Millard West advanced 11 swimmers in the championship races with top-six finishes in Friday's prelims. But only one Wildcat will compete in a consolation race that features qualifiers 7 through 12.

Westside has nine swimmers in both the championship and consolation races, which begin at 11 a.m. Saturday. The Warriors start the day five points behind the Wildcats, since Millard West finished ninth and 12th in Thursday's diving competition.

“I told you in November that it was going to be a dogfight,” Millard West coach Tracy Stauffer said. “Every point is important, so we're going to have to hold our positions or get better and try to knock them down.”

Several unofficial scoring calculations show a race too close to call, with a 12- to 15-point swing in either direction. The points may be so carved up that the winning team may fall short of 200 points for the first time since 1993.

“We do have 18 swims tomorrow. That's the best part,” Westside coach Doug Krecklow said. “I never add up points — I just look at the number of qualifiers. You lose a few and gain a few (from prelim positions) on the second day, but you hope you have more gains.”

The biggest accomplishment for both schools was advancing their three relay teams to the championship final. With that goal accomplished, the focus turned to individual events.

Westside had a number of quality performances from seniors. Among them: Molly Kroeger, the top qualifier in the 200 freestyle and second in the 100 freestyle; Elaina Blair and Katherine Lincoln in the 200 individual medley; Caroline Peetz and Blair in the 100 butterfly; and Kalyn Dorheim in the 500 freestyle.

“They have a great senior class,” Stauffer said. “They have leadership that I think was a huge factor in making things happen for them today.”

Wildcats junior Erin Oeltjen was the only swimmer to lead the field in two events. Oeltjen opened with her season-best time of 2:10.41 in the 200 IM. And then she became the first female swimmer this season to post a time on The World-Herald's all-time lists: the 57.77 she swam to set the pace in the 100 backstroke. Not only did she move from eighth to seventh all-time, but she also broke the Millard West school record set by Bianca Christensen in 2009.

Columbus sophomore Laura Miksch also inched closer to the all-time list in the 50 freestyle. First she led all qualifiers in the individual race with a season-leading 24.07. She then popped a 24.02 leading off the Discoverers' 200-yard relay, a time that moved Miksch within 0.09 seconds of 10th place. She likely will have two more chances to post a mark under 24 seconds on Saturday with the same double.

Miksch also finished second in qualifying for the 100 breaststroke with a 1:06.96. The leader was Ralston/Omaha Gross senior Katie Ditter, who came within 0.06 seconds of an all-time chart mark with a career best 1:06.45.

Ditter and Miksch will be joined in the final by sophomores Sophia Nelson of Lincoln Southwest and Yuan Yuan Jiang of Elkhorn/Elkhorn South, junior Lauren Pavel of Omaha Skutt and Ditter's Ralston/Gross teammate Jordane Linhart.

The breaststroke is the only event in which neither Millard West nor Westside has anyone competing in either the championship or consolation race. That means after the 100 backstroke, the Wildcats and Warriors will know what they have to do in the final event of the meet — the 400 freestyle relay.

“They have something to swim for now,” Krecklow said of all the qualifiers. “Now it's up to them to make a meet out of it.”

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402-618-4113, alexsdad@mail.com

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