Sentinels Girls Follow Super Sophomore to 4th-Straight Championship
By
Jason Juno
Special for MHSAA.com
February 15, 2025
MARQUETTE — Olive Krueger is just a sophomore. But she’s the one who leads by example for Marquette’s girls swimming & diving team.
Be in the pool on time. Finish the set. Do the little things to be a winning team.
It translates into success for her and her team. Marquette won its fourth-straight Upper Peninsula Finals championship Saturday, and Krueger was a part of four U.P. titles – two individually and two relays – to make it six for her young career.
Krueger finished first in a sprint race, the 100-yard freestyle (57.42), and the grueling 500 freestyle (5:40.30). She was also a part of the 200 medley relay that edged Kingsford by 15 hundredths of a second for the win in 1:59.32 and the 200 freestyle relay (1:46.51) that won more comfortably.
“Olive is a year-round swimmer, but she also never skips a set,” Marquette coach Nathan McFarren said. “She’s at practice — she wants more, give me more. The thing that’s special about Olive, too, is the fact she can win a 100 freestyle and a 500 freestyle not long after that. Just tough.
“But also a gentler approach. You know what, I’m going to get in the water and I want you guys to do the same thing. … That’s the one thing that we’ve always had in a leader with Olive as a sophomore, which is a huge thing.”
Krueger said she actually doesn’t really like the sprints, but she was happy how that race turned out as she finished ahead of Kingsford’s Sierra Scott for the win.
“I had really good competition – the girl next to me, she’s really fast, that was nice,” Krueger said.
The medley relay was a hard-fought victory for Marquette.
“We weren’t sure what it was going to look like against Kingsford because those Kingsford girls are very competitive and they brought their A game today,” McFarren said.
Marquette won the team championship, its 29th overall, with 347 points, well ahead of runner-up Kingsford with 252. Houghton was third and Gladstone fourth.
This was the smallest girls, and boys, teams that McFarren has had during his uber-successful tenure at Marquette that now includes a combined total of 19 Finals championships. The Sentinels actually weren’t able to slot swimmers in all the spots they could have in the girls meet. But they were able to win anyway with their still superior depth.
“To have three individuals in each event really gives us a leg up on the rest of the competition,” he said.
They had first-place power Saturday, too, in addition to Krueger’s successes. Nathan’s daughter Logan McFarren won the 200 freestyle (2:13.57), and Sophie Hausmann took first in diving (221.80 final score). Both were also part of the winning 200 freestyle relay team with McFarren also a member of the 200 medley team that finished first.
Coach McFarren was also a proud dad.
“That 200 was a great performance,” he said, pointing out Logan had only recently come out of concussion protocol. “To retrain, get back up and then bring her back down was a little bit of a battle.”
It certainly wasn’t easy.
“Especially in the 100 back because of the concussion, it took a lot in the mind. I feel like it was very hard to go back into it and I hadn’t (swam) it since I had gotten the concussion,” said Logan McFarren, who took second in that race. “It turned out well. I dropped a lot of time.”
The junior was seeded first in the 200 free. She was still nervous going into it, but she was able to get the victory.
“It was nerve-wracking because the girl next to me was only a few seconds behind me,” McFarren said. “It was a good win. I was happy to start my first two races off with a win.”
Gladstone junior Irene Neumeier had a big day as well, finishing first in the 100 butterfly (1:02.78) and 100 backstroke (1:05.96).
“The 100 fly was pretty good,” she said. “I was pretty nervous because I was ranked third, and I also have a sinus infection. So I was a little nervous for that, but I knew after the first 50, I would be able to push through.”
Scott won a race of her own, the 200 IM (2:29.64). Kingsford’s Ella McLean finished fastest in the 100 backstroke (1:13.66). Their freshman teammate, Allison Deuter, took first in the 50 freestyle (25.43) despite being seeded second.
“I was just trying to go fast, and get No. 1 as a freshman. It’s great,” she said. “I was expecting to win, and I’m glad I did. It feels awesome knowing I still have three more years of this.”
Scott and Deuter were also members of Kingsford’s winning 400 freestyle relay (4:01.43).
PHOTOS (Top) Marquette's Olive Krueger swims to a victory in the 100-yard freestyle Saturday. (Middle) Finalists including Marquette's Logan McFerren launch into the backstroke. (Below) Marquette's Sophie Hausmann begins a dive during Friday's competition. (Photos by Daryl T. Jarvinen. Click for more.)
No Slowing Down For Oxford's Krajcarski After Championship Finish
By
Keith Dunlap
Special for MHSAA.com
December 12, 2024
OXFORD — A championship was won, school history was made, and the accolades have been constant and deserved for Oxford senior Tristan Krajcarski.
But despite all of that, rest and taking it easy certainly hasn’t been on the itinerary for Krajcarski ever since she won the diving competition at the MHSAA Lower Peninsula Division 1 Finals on Nov. 23 – even though her high school athletic diving career is technically over.
“The most time I took off was two days,” Krajcarski said. “But I’ve been in the pool pretty much every day with the boys team working on 1 and 3-meter (dives).”
Next up for Krajcarski is a collegiate career at Buffalo, and in her words, there is “so much more” to achieve in the sport even after a terrific high school career.
Krajcarski qualified for the Finals three out of her four years at Oxford, finishing third as a junior with an All-American score of 329.05 before having a dominant senior season.
Krajcarski won every event she competed in this fall, highlighted by becoming the first diver — boys or girls — from Oxford to win a Finals title when she accumulated 432.60 points, nearly 40 points more than runner-up Lindi Jenkins of Saline.
What drove Krajcarski to the top of the state and what still drives her to do more was her greatest disappointment, which occurred during her sophomore year.
After qualifying for the Finals as a freshman, Krajcarski had a disappointing 2022 Regional and didn’t advance. She rallied behind teammates and supported them during their championship events in Holland, but not competing herself there became a rallying cry.
“It was very hard to not have that expectation of (making the Finals) met when the people around me did,” she said. “I felt kind of defeated, and it motivated me to do more.
“It was kind of scary to do more, but I knew I wasn’t going to let it happen again. Just how I worked and how I viewed diving changed. Now I always have this motivation to always keep going, and it’s become my expectation. I don’t really like taking time off — even though I probably should — but I just feel like I can constantly get better to not be let down again.”
Krajcarski certainly wasn’t disappointed with her junior and senior years, which featured the third-place finish as a junior, the Finals championship this year and a trip to Rome, Italy, this past summer as a representative of the AAU U.S. national team, which competed in the same venue used for the 1960 Summer Olympics.
John Pearson, the diving coach for both Oxford and Lake Orion, said Krajcarski easily could have scored even higher at the Finals, but that more difficult dives simply weren’t necessary.
“She was already outscoring everybody by 40 points with a tuck position instead of a pike position,” he said. “At the state meet, we decided to stay with what she was comfortable with. To me, it was more important at that meet to be comfortable. All Tristan had to do at the state meet was be herself and get up and down 11 times. I was confident that if she did that and if she did her best, nobody could catch her.”
Not too shabby for someone who didn’t even get into diving until the spring of her eighth grade year.
Krajcarski originally was a gymnast but said after a while she got burned out in that sport before discovering a love for diving.
“I’ve always loved the water and I always liked swimming, but I wasn’t very good at swimming itself,” she said. “Combining what I’d already known of gymnastics with the water, it made me very happy. People think it’s really similar to gymnastics, but you have to learn a whole new set of techniques. I thought it was cool to go through the process of learning something new while still having the experience from gymnastics.”
It was obviously a successful switch, and now nothing is slowing her passion to get better at diving every day.
As the last couple of weeks have shown, not even a championship has made Krajcarski complacent.
“I can get way better,” she said.
Keith Dunlap has served in Detroit-area sports media for more than two decades, including as a sportswriter at the Oakland Press from 2001-16 primarily covering high school sports but also college and professional teams. His bylines also have appeared in USA Today, the Washington Post, the Detroit Free Press, the Houston Chronicle and the Boston Globe. He served as the administrator for the Oakland Activities Association’s website from 2017-2020. Contact him at keithdunlap78@gmail.com with story ideas for Oakland, Macomb and Wayne counties.
PHOTOS (Top) Oxford senior Tristan Krajcarski, holding the “champion” sign, stands atop the podium after receiving her medal for winning the Division 1 diving competition last month. (Middle) Krajcarski reaches the water on a dive during the Finals. (Click for more from High School Sports Scene.)