From staff reports

sports@joplinglobe.com

Shawn Klosterman has good reason to be optimistic about his Webb City boys swimming team’s chances at the state meet this weekend.

Klosterman, in his 10th year at the Cardinals’ helm, guided his squad to a fourth-place finish last weekend at the Southwest Missouri Championships in which four new team records were established.

Not only that but the Cardinals came in with a 9-5 regular-season dual-meet mark with a much smaller team than in recent years.

“For having a small group, we had a spectacular year,” Klosterman said. “We had 12 swimmers at the end of the season and last year we had 22. We actually placed better in the Southwest Missouri Championships than last year.”

The Cardinals finished behind three Springfield schools — Kickapoo, Glendale and Central — and one point ahead of Nixa.

But it may have been the team records that cheered the Webb City coach the most.

Junior Matt Roughton broke a 2003 mark set by Bryan Muench in the 200 individual medley by four seconds. The new school record is 2:01.55.

Roughton had held the 100-yard breaststroke record for the last two weeks until Jon Sanders, a senior, turned in a time of 1:04.42 last weekend.

“I have never had two swimmers break a team record in the same event in one year before,” Klosterman said. “The old record was by Neal Sellers from 2001.”

A sophomore, Eli Swaim, shattered the 11-dive record by Mark Sabado in 1987. Swaim’s score was 414.35 points.

The Cardinals’ 200 medley relay team record, extending from 2003, was broken twice. Once was with Ryan Tourigny on the backstroke and again with Roughton. The other team members are Sanders, Stevie Dugdale and Sam Burnside.

Six qualifiers and two relay alternates, Anthony Chambers and Ethan Severance, will be representing Webb City when state preliminaries get under way at 3 p.m. Friday at the St. Peters Rec-Plex. Diving competition begins at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, with swimming finals to start at 3 p.m.

Roughton is seeded seventh in the 100-yard freestyle and 12th in the 200 individual medley, which is the first time since 2003 that anyone from Webb City has been seeded in the state meet.