Champions Old & New Thrive in D2
By
Steve Vedder
Special for MHSAA.com
January 16, 2021
GRAND RAPIDS – Hannah Williams doesn't mind flying under the radar. In fact, the Portage Northern sophomore has thrived in the underdog role.
Williams went from virtually an unknown freshman to shocking nearly everyone including herself with a pair of individual titles at Saturday's Lower Peninsula Division 2 swimming & diving meet at Grand Rapids Northview.
She joined Jordyn Shipps of DeWitt as the only swimmers to capture two events in a meet won by Birmingham Seaholm for the third time in five years.
Williams, who didn't qualify for the Finals a year ago, won the 200-yard freestyle (1:49.42) and the 100 breaststroke (1:03.68), an admitted stunner for nearly everyone. Williams won three state titles in club swimming as an eighth grader, but didn't necessarily move the attention needle as a freshman.
"I'm as surprised as you – I didn't expect it," she said. "I don't know where it came from. I was kind of nervous, but my coach said just bust it, just go for it, just swim as well as I can. Nobody really knew who I was, and that was kind of a perk."
The same can't be said for Shipps, who was making her fourth Finals trip. She captured the 200 individual medley (2:02.50) and 100 free (50.80). Shipps, who is headed to Oakland University next season, credited her experience – combined with a simple swim philosophy – with leaving her in the hunt for a title.
"I don't have a best event, but the (200 IM) is definitely one of my stronger ones," she said. "You need four different strokes to be good, and my approach is just to get out front and stay there. I just wanted the chance to compete, and I did. It was awesome."
While Williams and Shipps stood out as individuals, Seaholm coach Karl Hodgson said his swimmers don't necessarily turn heads individually, but compete as well as any athlete. Seaholm won the 200 free (1:36.15) and 400 free relays (3:31.84), but garnered no individual winners. The same actually happened for last year's Maples championship team. Seaholm finished with 309 points on Saturday to 263 for runner-up Rochester Adams. Grand Rapids Northview was third with 174.
"We have numbers and talent," Hodgson said. "We have been fortunate to have a lot of talented kids. We knew we would be in the hunt. We had a lot of our team back, so we definitely knew we'd be in the hunt. The strength to our team is relay, and depth."
Seaholm's roster Saturday included eight seniors from a team of 56 swimmers. Hodgson said a season which included two stoppages, week-to-week workouts and virtual meetings was difficult, particularly at the end.
"I'll be honest, some girls didn't want to do this," he said. "They had already moved on, so this was tough."
Williams wasn't the only Portage Northern swimmer to win a title as junior Angelina Baker won the 500 free (4:57.15).
Other winners included Grace Albrecht of Jenison, who won the 50 free (23.90), Fenton's Gracie Olsen in the 100 butterfly (55.18) and Abby Forbes of Grand Rapids Northview, who won the 100 backstroke (56.15).
Albrecht, just a freshman, went from success in the USA swim program "JAWS" a year ago to her title.
"Obviously it was difficult," she said. "You just try to motivate yourself as much as you can. I just tried to beat my best time and not look at placing."
Unlike Williams and Albrecht, who were making their Finals debuts, Olsen had won three individual events in her first two trips as a freshman and sophomore.
"Each year is as fun as the year before," she said. "Experience helps. You recognize what is around you and what to expect. There is still pressure, but you get used to it."
Forbes, a conference winner in the 100 backstroke and 200 IM, said her personal expectations have grown each season.
"As a freshman you're just swimming to get a personal best. But I have confidence in myself and I wanted to finish first or second," she said. "This was just awesome. I set some goals and I had confidence I could make them."
Division 2 champions also included Rochester Adams in the 200 medley relay (1:45.65). Lily Witte, a sophomore from Dexter, repeated as the diving champion with 486.95 points – an LPD2 Finals record.
PHOTOS: (Top) Birmingham Seaholm's Samantha Clifford, top, swims toward one of her four top-three individual or relay finishes at Saturday's Division 2 Finals. (Middle) St. Joseph's Sylvia Park swims her leg of the 200 medley relay. (Click to see more from HighSchoolSportsScene.com.)
Performance: DeWitt's Jordyn Shipps
September 13, 2019
Jordyn Shipps
DeWitt junior – Swimming
The Panthers’ standout won the 200-yard freestyle (1:56.91) and 100 butterfly (58.77) at her team’s DeWitt Invitational on Saturday against a field that included ranked teams Chelsea and Grand Rapids Northview. Although the season is only a few weeks old, both times would’ve placed at last year’s Lower Peninsula Division 2 Finals and she finished ahead of 2018 Finals placers or qualifiers in both races – earning Shipps the first MHSAA “Performance of the Week” of the 2019-20 school year.
Shipps finished fifth in the butterfly and sixth in the 200 individual medley at last year’s LPD2 Finals, swimming also on the seventh-place 200 medley and 13th-place 200 freestyle relays. She was sixth in the butterfly and fourth in the IM in LPD3 as a freshman in 2017, also swimming on two placing relays along with her oldest sister Sydney. Jordyn is the third daughter and youngest sibling from this generation of one of the best-known swim families in the Lansing area; Sydney was a six-time Finals individual placer over her last three seasons of high school and competes now at Saginaw Valley State University, and their father Steve Shipps was a five-time LP Class B Finals champion from 1986-88 who went on to earn All-America honors at Michigan State University. Middle sister Ashley was a standout distance runner, graduating from DeWitt this spring, and is a freshman competing at Western Michigan University.
Jordyn changed up her swim training this summer from sprint-based to more middle distance to “branch out a bit,” she said, and the 200 free is among races she’s also considering swimming at this season’s Finals in November. She’ll no doubt have an opportunity in two years to follow her sisters and compete at the college level in addition to shining academically – Jordyn carries a 4.0 GPA and ranks among the top 10 percent of her graduating class academically. She’s considering engineering and pre-medical studies as possible options when that time comes – she enjoys the math and process of engineering, and the opportunity to impact people’s lives in medicine. For now, she’s making another giant impact on a DeWitt swimming & diving team that finished fourth Saturday coming off a 12th-place LPD2 Finals finish a year ago – and doesn’t have a senior this fall.
Coach Gregg Brace said: “Jordyn sets high standards for herself. She is frequently the first person in the water at practice. She works hard all the time and doesn’t back off when practice gets hard. She expects to be challenged in practice, and if she feels she isn’t getting challenged she will let me know. … Having a student like Jordyn on the team helps to build our positive team culture. Win or lose she always reaches out to her opponents to congratulate them after every race. She encourages her teammates and leads by example. She is the first to start on setup and cleanup before and after meets. Her attitude really helps build our team-first focus.”
Performance Point: “Early this season we started to create a very positive and fun environment within our team, so that’s helped me swim faster – it’s easy to swim faster when you’re having fun,” Shipps said. “So now that we’ve created that positive and fun environment, I feel more motivated to go fast and wanting to go fast because I have the most supportive team ever. And the other thing that helps with the invitational and going fast was Coach Brace – we’ve been doing some different training this year, just those tough sets that he always gives us to challenge us have really been helpful. … I really wasn’t expecting to swim that fast last weekend. We had great competition there – we never get to see Northview or Chelsea or places like that, so it was just nice to have competition like that. To have those people to race against I think really helped me to pace off of them and try to go fast.”
On a mission: “This year we have a pretty young team. We’re not graduating any seniors, so everyone on the team will be coming back next year. I think (Coach Brace) sees a lot of potential with us. We have some freshmen with a lot of potential (and) they have a background in club swimming. I think he’s trying to make a base for us, so we can continue it throughout the year and continue to do good this year and next year.”
No seniors, but many leaders: “Our junior class has seven or eight kids in it, so all seven or eight are stepping up to leadership roles. We all play a part in how we lead the team and in showing the underclassmen what to do in certain situations. It’s been nice to not only have captains step up but have everyone in the junior class help the underclassmen to get into a routine with training and school. The balance is always hard between school and swimming, and our junior class is very helpful with helping other people, which is good.”
Shipps sail together: “I really wasn’t going to join swimming until my older sisters did – they kinda pushed me to join the sport. I saw them at practice and meets and said I was like, ‘Wow, I want to do that. That’s looks fun.’ (My dad) was the head of our club, so he guided me into program, but it was really my older sisters that made me want to do the sport. … It’s super fun and supportive. As a family we always have that competitive edge. So it helps to have people guide me through different situations, and it’s just nice to have people there for me who know what it’s like to be in that stressful situation and that stressful race and what to do. They’ve been super helpful and supportive toward me. I couldn’t imagine it any other way.”
Ready to race: “I’m super confident about where I’m at right now this year, especially with the way Coach Brace has been training us. I’m very confident leading up to the state finals. I have different goals this year: I’m trying to be at the top of the state of course; first place or second place is where I’m aiming now, (and I have) a lot of best times I’m hoping for. I think this might be the year where I have those breakthrough swims.”
– Geoff Kimmerly
Second Half editor
PHOTOS: (Top) DeWitt's Jordyn Shipps races in the 100 freestyle during a dual last season against St. Johns. (Middle) Shipps swims the backstroke; she won both events at that meet. (Photos by TCP Photography.)