Charles City YMCA swimmers qualify to State Meet

By John Burbridge

sports@charlescitypress.com

CHARLES CITY — Watersports can warp time and space as effectively as they refract images of swimmers streamlining below the surface.

So when Joel Paplow relates the story of how he came up 2 seconds shy of qualifying for the state meet last season in the 50-yard backstroke, you have to realize that 2 seconds in swimming can be compared to the running time of a Ken Burns documentary.

But Paplow “feels good” about his prospects at this weekend’s (March 1-2) YMCA State Swim Meet at the Marshalltown YMCA.

Yet it’s not because he qualified in the aforementioned 50 back.

“I missed it by two-tenths (0.20) of a second,” Paplow said of closing the gap considerably from the season before.

Though Paplow didn’t make the 50 back cut, he qualified in two other events: the Boys 11-12 50- and 100-yard breaststrokes.

“With me qualifying in two events and almost qualifying in a third gives me a little more confidence,” said Paplow, who has been swimming with the Charles City Family YMCA Swim Team for six years. This will be his first trip to state.

He will be joined by longtime teammate Damian Blakewell, who qualified to state in the Young Men’s 15-21 50-yard breaststroke. Blakewell, who has been on the CC YMCA Swim Team several seasons longer than Paplow, had qualified for YMCA State before.

A Charles City resident, Blakewell recently finished his first high school swimming season as a freshman member of the Mason City Riverhawks.

“I’ve found out that it’s a lot more competitive in high school,” said Blakewell, who like many Charles City residents/Mason City swimmers before him, was forced to make long commutes to and from practices and meets.

Paplow lives just inside the Nashua-Plainfield School District zone. He plans to swim in high school, but since N-P doesn’t have a swimming pool or team and Charles City no longer has a pool and team, it will likely be at Mason City or somewhere else.

The Charles City YMCA Swim Team is coached by Sydney Kiefer, who used to swim for Charles City when it did have a team and home pool at the old middle school.

Kiefer had a coaching stint at the CC YMCA before and returned to coach its team this season.