A Carthage men's swimming tradition continued today with the 9th Annual Turkey Shootout. Each year the event has become a little more elaborate, and been a little better planned.
The team is seeded into two triple-elimination brackets. Swimmers compete head-to-head. Over the course of 30-odd races, (distance and stroke selected at random), the original two dozen are weeded down to the final four who face off in a best of three series to determine the champion.
There were some great races and some big upsets. Dan Jones (seeded second) first losing to defending champion Eric Ross, then suffered the draw of back-to-back breaststroke events against Adam Van Huis and Ben Coder. Ross began working his way back through the triple losers' bracket. On the other side, the races went according to seed with Ripley, Drake, and Blake going down to the wire with Blake coming out in front.
That set up best of three races between Kyle Drake and Mitchell Jackson for third place and Blake and Tom Stowe for the Championship. Neither matchup needed all three races, though as Tom and Mitchell swept their two races.The prizes (t-shirts) went 24-deep. Some were good (new shirts from Olympic Trials complete with tags) - others were a bit older (like from the 1990 NCAA Women's Division III Championships). Tom took home the custom Winner's Shirt.
Final rankings were:
| 1st | Stowe |
| 2nd | Bendix |
| 3rd | Jackson |
| 4th | Drake |
| 5th | Ripley |
| Glover | |
| 7th | Pellican |
| Ross | |
| 9th | Smith |
| Bond | |
| 11th | Mathe |
| Rothenbaum | |
| 13th | Alfes |
| Carabelli | |
| Coder | |
| Alex VH | |
| 17th | Hedin |
| Varner | |
| Jones | |
| Inness | |
| 21st | Adam VH |
| Ortmann | |
| Schranck | |
| Moravek |