Manta Ray Aquatics athletes qualify for champs at Christmas Open

WENATCHEE — 42 Manta Ray athletes participated in the Christmas Open hosted by Velocity Swimming at the Tony St. Onge Pool of Dreams recently.

This was an astounding swim meet for Manta Ray Aquatics, with many impressive time drops and first-time swims by Moses Lake athletes. The stand-out swimmer of the meet was Lennox Leeder, who due to his high placings in multiple events took home the prestigious High Point Award for the Boys 8 and Under age group.

Another highlight of the meet was the MRA girls 11-12 Medley Relay team, who claimed a second-place finish on Saturday. This relay team of Julia Heaps (backstroke), Melody Lake (breaststroke), Aline Davis (butterfly), and Issabelle Parrish (freestyle) achieved a new team record with a time 2:20.77.

The freestyle and breaststroke events proved to be strong points for Manta Ray Aquatics throughout the duration of the meet. Ten 14 and Under swimmers cut significant amounts of time in these events, as well as qualified for the season-culminating IES Short Course Champs meet at the beginning of March.

Those MRA athletes adding to the Champs squad include Anderson Addink, Annika Burke, Kathryn Duvall, Sophia Estudillo, Julia Heaps, Melody Lake, Nicholas Moore, Mikhaela Parrish, Marcus Quezada, and Kendall Vance.

In the Men’s 15 and over age group, the duo of Max Boruff and Alex McLain also demonstrated break-out swims in the sprint freestyle events. Both boys broke the 1:00 mark in the 100 freestyle for the first time, as well as swam 50 Freestyles in under 26 seconds. Manta Ray Aquatics plans to continue to train hard and set their sights on Champs as they head into the second-half of the Winter season.