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SYRACUSE - For a teacher at Wawasee High School to have Laura Coutinho, Laura Karns and Laura Lundin in the same class could be a nightmare, having to keep their names straight, but swimming coach Roger Karns knows who's who.
As do the rest of the area swim teams.
Add Jenny Butt to that trio, and they transform from a tongue-twister into the Warriors' 200 freestyle relay team
A relay team that holds the Northern Lakes Conference record with their time of 1:43.23.
A relay team that boasts an undefeated record this season.
"They're undefeated," said the elder Karns with a smile that stretched from ear to ear. "It's been a good event for us. One of our strengths is the sprint events."
The previous record was set last year.
"It had been 1:43.27, the old record," said Karns. "Lundin and my daughter (Laura Karns) were on that team too."
And as for the name thing.
"In practice when you call someone by name it requires an initial, too," said the elder Karns. "Jenny Butt is unfortunate, not being named Laura. Sometimes the papers will say things like 'the Laura team' so sometimes we call her Laura Butt."
"I heard someone on the radio say Laura Jenny Butt," jokes Coutinho, a foreign exchange student from Brazil."
"It doesn't bother me," says Butt. "I've had to live with my last name."
"She's the Laura with a question mark, the want to be," jokes the quick-witted Lundin. "I used to swim on a relay team of Meaghans at Warsaw."
And so this team of Lauras will meet Warsaw's two Meaghans, McCammon and Neill, Saturday in the Warsaw Sectional. Wawasee has won the sectional two years in a row.
"I'm pretty pleased with our season," said Karns. "We did finish 8-4. We've had better, but it's not bad. Our conference was unusually strong this year with Northridge, Concord and Goshen. Our other loss was to Penn. We had a very competitive conference, We swam well through that. I can't stress enough how tough the NLC is. I think it's one of the five tougest conferences in the state, for all sports."
The sectional field will also consist of Bremen, Culver Academy, Huntington North, Manchester, Plymouth, Rochester, Tippecanoe Valley, Triton and one swimmer from Wabash.
"Our team set their goals high," said Karns. "We'd like to win sectionals and qualify as many for state as possible, two relay teams or three if possible. I hope we do well. It's our goal and expectation. Warsaw is greatly improved, and Valley is looking surprisingly strong. Steve Doerscher (Valley coach) does a good job of getting the kids ready. The contest should be in question until Saturday's finals are over. I hope nobody runs away from us."
Karns knows that four individuals alone can't carry the team and noted that numerous others have come on strong for the Warriors.
"We have a tradition of being strong in the sprint freestyle events," said Karns. "But Tasha Harper, Jane Wamsley and Amber Lyons have given some great performances. This is what a coach wants to see, improvement across the board. I think we've had that."
The sectional prelims will be Thursday at 5:30 p.m. with the finals at 2 p.m. Saturday.
