Thursday night started as tumultuously as the season did for the Moorhead boys swimming and diving team.
The Spuds were disqualified after winning the opening event, the 200-yard medley relay. One race later, the computer system crashed, causing a delay long enough to force several spectators to their iPods for entertainment.
But like the season, things got better from there. The Spuds beat Detroit Lakes, Minn., 114-69 for their third consecutive victory since a32-point, season-opening loss at Alexandria, Minn., that ended a 33-meet, nearly five-year win streak.
"I think it's a good thing it happened to bring us back to reality, show us that a lot of our real good guys have graduated and that we're not as strong as we used to be," Moorhead senior Rob Schaefer said of the defeat. "The last two meets after that were amazing. It makes it fun to go in there and have the odds against you and have that underdog feeling."
It was just like old times in the home opener against the Class 1A Lakers, however.
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With more than a 2-to-1 edge in participants, the Class 2A Spuds could afford to "swim around" as Anderson called it, a conditioning technique of entering swimmers in events other than their specialties that he has used regularly in previous years.
As a bonus, the swapping enabled a bit of premeditated international intrigue.
In both the 200 individual medley and the 100 freestyle, Schaefer, who finished 23rd in the 100-meter breaststroke at the 2005 U.S. Open, went head-to-head with Lakers' senior Henrik Bewarder, a foreign exchange student from the German junior national team.
The third leg of each race proved to be key as Schaefer won the 200 IM in 2:02.27 and Bewarder - who already owns two Detroit Lakes school and pool records - claimed the 100 freestyle at 49.58.
"We've had a lot of foreign exchange students. Nobody has ever asked about the other 20 I've had over the years," joked Lakers coach Mike Daly, who worked with Spuds coach Pat Anderson to set up the showdown. "He's not in shape yet so we're excited about that."
As for the Spuds, well, they seem almost relieved that the streak, which had always been secondary to success on the section and state level, is kaput. Of course, that's not to say they're complacent.
Following Thursday's false start, Anderson called a team huddle and "got in some faces" for what wasn't the first time this season.
"I was pretty hard on them after the loss to Alexandria because we hadn't lost in a long time," he said. "And I thought it was important that some of the guys had been used to winning for so long that I think the attitudes kind of slacked just a little bit so I made sure I sent them the appropriate message and they've been swimming really well since then.
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"You get it out of the way first meet and so now we kind of carry on."
200 medley relay: 1, Detroit Lakes (Bewarder, Wyborny, Pechmann, Branstad) 1:52.38. 2, Moorhead 1:59.33. 3, Moorhead 2:16.77.
Readers can reach Forum reporter Terry Vandrovec at (701) 241-5548
