The rest of the Northern Badger Conference is on notice: the Baraboo girls swimming team means business.

On Tuesday night, three days after winning the Janesville Parker Relays, the Thunderbirds defended their home pool in a meet that featured some powerful teams the T-Birds will see again in the new season in the Badger North Relays.

Baraboo finished with 102 points, ahead of DeForest and McFarland, which each finished with 88. Sauk Prairie (66), Waunakee (52) and River Valley (32) rounded out the scoring.

The Thunderbirds started out strong, winning three of the first four races.

In the first race, the 400 yard medley relay team of Emily O'Rourke, Blair Murphy, Shannon Keeling and Emily Thompson won one of the tightest races of the meet, edging out Sauk Prairie by less than three tenths of a second with a time of 4 minutes, 14.59 seconds.

Two races later, Gemma Pillsbury, Murphy, O'Rourke and Keeling won the 400 individual medley relay in 4:24.68.

Ellie Ruefer, Thompson, Lacey Craker and Raegen Trimmer followed that up with a win in the 200 free relay in 1:45.26.

Ruefer said it's not an accident that the team has been so good, so early this season.

"Usually, in the first weeks of practice there's a lot of drills and it's really hard," she said. "This year, everyone's just working so hard.

"This is like our best team ever, and I'm just so glad it's coming in my senior year."

While the T-Birds have won their first two meets, head coach Lynn Keeling cautioned that there's a long way to go in the season. So far though, she couldn't be happier with what she's seen out of the team.

"DeForest and McFarland are great teams, and Sauk's top girls are incredible," she said. "It's going to be a really exciting conference, and we're going to have a lot of good dual meets."

The Thunderbirds didn't win any races after their 200 free relay team won the fourth contest of the evening, but they picked up points by finishing in the top three in all their remaining races.

Kayla Hanson, Pillsbury, Liz Teasdale and Brianne Schwarz took second in the 200 medley relay.

Pillsbury, Kayla Steinhorst, Craker and Murphy finished second in the 200 breaststroke.

Thompson, Ruefer, O'Rourke and Shannon Keeling took home the second spot in the 400 free relay to close out the meet.

Taking third place were the 200 butterfly, 200 backstroke and 200 freshman/sophomore relay teams.

The 500 crescendo relay team finished fourth in the second race of the meet.

"We definitely wanted to beat DeForest and McFarland," Ruefer said. "We knew that both teams lost a lot of girls last year, and we just wanted to show the other teams how much better Baraboo is this year."

If they paid any attention on Tuesday, then they know.