Piranhas end summer swim season

Pictured is the 2017 Waterloo Piranhas swimming team. (submitted photo)


The Waterloo Piranhas youth swim team enjoyed a successful summer despite not winning a meet.

The Piranhas ended their season with a fourth place finish at the Kaskaskia Conference meet that took place July 22. Greenville took top honors, followed by Columbia, Sparta and Waterloo.

“Unfortunately, we placed fourth (or last), as we still do not have the numbers to be competitive with the other teams in our league,” Piranhas head coach Vickie Kehrer said. “Competition was great across the pool from all teams, though.”

The team did have several swimmers post top individual scores.

Ryker Swope and Delaney Ullrich were top scorers in the ages 7-8 group.

Sophie Breitwiser and Calla Espenschied were top scorers in the ages 9-10 group.

Carrie Wagenknecht was a top scorer in the ages 11-12 group.

Devon Walter, Kylee McKay and Olivia Most excelled in the ages 13-14 group.

Jake Reeve and Nick Reeve were top scorers in the ages 15-18 group.

“We were missing approximately 25 swimmers at conference, some of which were our top swimmers for the season such as Ellie Ahne and Janie Kehrer,” Vickie Kehrer explained.

Greenville, the host team of the conference meet, honored Janie Kehrer before the event, thanking her for recently becoming a United States Marine.

“Most of our relay teams placed well throughout the meet,” the coach added.

The Piranhas also offered best wishes to Jake Reeve, who swam four seasons with the team, and Janie Kehrer, who was a part of the team the past 10 seasons.

“This was their final meet, as they have reached the age limit to swim,” Vickie Kehrer said.

The coach concluded by expressing pride in this year’s team for all of the hard work put into swimming.

“I’m so proud of each of our swimmers, as they’ve all made tremendous improvement throughout our short season,” she said.

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Corey Saathoff

Corey is the editor of the Republic-Times. He has worked at the newspaper since 2004, and currently resides in Columbia. He is also the principal singer-songwriter and plays guitar in St. Louis area country-rock band The Trophy Mules.
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