There’s no denying the Thunder Mountain High School boys swim team dominates at the regional level.
After this weekend, one may venture to say at the state level, too.
Bartlett High School in Anchorage hosts the 2017 ASAA/First National Bank Alaska Swim &Dive Championships today and Saturday. The preliminary races start at 1 p.m. today followed by 1-meter diving. On Saturday at 1 p.m., the girls 200-yard medley relay begins the round of finals.
TMHS qualified a total of 17 swimmers: eight boys and nine girls; Juneau-Douglas High School qualified a total of 13 swimmers: five boys and eight girls.
All signs point the TMHS boys maintaining or improving on their third-place mark at last year’s state meet, when excellent swims by Spencer Holt and Bergen Davis brought the Falcons’ point total up to 62 points. Kodiak and their phenom do-it-all-swimmer Talon Lindquist won first with 105 points in that meet. Dimond was second with 86 points.
Kodiak and Dimond once again appear to be Thunder Mountain’s biggest obstacles this year to winning a state championship.
“Everyone needs to do their best,” TMHS boys captain Raymie Matiashowski said. “And whatever happens, happens, but we all need to do our best and if we do our best we have decent shot at possibly winning or second place.”
The team intends to set the new state record in the 200-yard medley relay on Saturday. The Falcons only swam a 1 minute, 42.87 seconds in the Southeast Alaska Regional meet, but they also held two of their top swimmers out of it. The current state record for the event, set in 2015 by Dimond High School, is 1:36.29.
Should TMHS head coach Josiah Loseby decide to swim Holt and newcomer Casey Hamilton in the event, they could very well break the record.
Whether Hamilton does end up swimming in the relay (there’s a very good chance he will), his main focus will be on his 200-yard individual medley and 100-yard backstroke.
He has the second-best seed times in both of these events.
Hamilton touched out Davis in the 200-yard individual medley final at the regional meet last weekend. Hamilton’s 1:54.28 and Davis’ 1:54.40 in the race were good for the third and fourth best all-time 200 individual medley times in Alaska high school swimming history.
Plenty of JDHS and TMHS girls swimmers will also be in action at state. The fast swims of Peyten Schultz, Annie Hagen, Andyn Mulgrew-Truitt and Cameron Howard all qualified them for various events.
“Everyone swam really well, there were personal bests,” Hagen, a senior at TMHS, said of the regional meet. “We’re taking a really big group up to state this year so we’re feeling really happy and that we’ll swim well.”
• Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nolin.ainsworth@juneauempire.com.
Thunder Mountain High School junior Spencer Holt swims in the 200-yard freestyle preliminary at the Southeast Alaska Regional Swim and Dive Championships at the Dimond Park Aquatic Center, Friday, Oct. 27, 2017. Holt qualified for the state meet in all four of his events over the weekend. Last season, Holt posted the seventh fastest time in the 100-yard butterfly in Alaska high school history. (Michael Penn | Juneau Empire)
