Bainbridge High School’s girls swim team was quick to take advantage of its new opportunities in 2A by capturing the state crown last month.
Now it’s the boys’ turn to make their mark on the classification this winter after back-to-back third-place finishes at 3A state in the past two seasons and plenty of returning talent ready to make another run at the top spot.
“I don’t think we’ve crunched the numbers and studied it enough to know that we’re there, but this today was a good baseline to see some state cuts come our way,” said assistant boys coach Krista Pal. “I think ultimately it’s a fun goal to have, and we’ll see if we can reach it.”
The Spartans are already poised to send a few of its swimmers back to the King County Aquatic Center this February after a successful opening meet of the regular season against Olympic. Junior Mathias Bang-Knudsen and senior Elias Dean, half of last season’s title-winning 200-yard free relay in 3A, swam with freshman Romy Greer and sophomore Beckett Lipton to a 1:47.30 finish in the 200-yard medley relay.
Even more notable was that they came in second. Another Bainbridge team made up of sophomores Leo Soboil and Bradley Roloff and juniors Sota Inuoe and Ryan Rich took first place by two seconds, finishing at 1:45.04.
Relay teams would claim victory in the other two relays of the afternoon. Bang-Knudson, Rich, senior Hayden Ludwig and sophomore Jack Rogoski won the 200-yard free relay (1:40.80), and Inoue, Ludwig, Bean and sophomore Ian Letson won the 400-yard free (3:43.06).
Inoue and Ledwig have Pal especially excited for this season. Ludwig claimed a win in the 200 yard free (2:00.87), while Inoue took first in the 200 yard individual medley and 100 yard butterfly (56.23).
“Two great characters and hard workers,” she said of them. “They’ll be great leaders for us this year for sure.”
Also winning races for the Spartans were Bang-Knudsen in the 50 free (22.55), Letson in the 100 free (53.29), Roloff in the 500 free (5:36.86), Dean in the 100 back (58.03) and Rich in the 100 breaststroke (1:04.13).
