Sumner Newscow report — A four-legged Wellington girls relay team is heading to state – making history in doing so.

The 400-yard freestyle relay team — consisting of Georgia Shinliver, Abby Ybarra, Sophie Cornejo, and Ellie McComb — has qualified for the Class 5- 1A Girls Swimming and Diving State Championships at Cap Fed Natatorium in Topeka-Hummer- Sports Park on May 22-24. The girls’ relay team is expected to swim on Friday at 4 p.m.

The girls learned of their fate this morning. In high school swimming, state qualifiers are chosen based on making a certain time. At the end of the year, you can either have a qualifying team, which automatically qualifies you for state, or a consideration time, which means like it says that you are being “considered.” There are several factors that play into this, but basically, the state has a certain number of state qualifiers, and the best “consideration” times go to get to that number.

In Wellington’s case, their consideration time was good enough to go.

Wellington finished sixth in the 400 relay, beating teams like Clearwater, Rose Hill and Circle. The Crusaders didn’t make the qualifying time of 3:47.87. But it did accomplish the 4:27.54 “consideration” time. They received word at 10 a.m. today they were one of the teams that qualified. The team was subsequently honored with a hall march with the band.

It was the only time the relay team competed as “Wellington,” as in the post-season, that you can only compete representing your school (it is that way in all sports). During the regular season, Wellington girls competed as Winfield.

Wellington has been sending swimmers to Winfield since Jensen Lynnes started in 2021. This marks the first year they have had more than four girls participating in order to make a relay team.