Bears, Rams top South Sound finishers in Narrows boys swim

Huatsern Yeager got a refresher lesson in geometry Friday at the 3A/4A Narrows League swim championships at Mt. Tahoma High School.

The Capital senior had a great day, recording a personal best 57.03 as he came in second in the 100-yard butterfly and knocking one second off his 50 fly split time in helping the Cougars earn second place behind speedy North Thurston in the 200 medley relay in 1:47.36.

However, Yeager missed a third PR in winning the 50 free in 22.81 when his final stroke caused him to touch the timing pad a bit later than he could have.

“I picked my hand up and came in with it over my head, instead of straight to the wall,” he said. “I got off to a good start and was kicking pretty well.”

In the 100 fly, he dropped 0.72 off his best previous mark.

“I went out hard, probably harder than I should have,” he said. “My kick was failing a little bit in the final 25 yards, and without a good kick it’s hard to pull your stroke through in the butterfly.

The Narrows meet is conducted as a series of timed finals, with 3A and 4A swimmers competing together and a computer sorting the finishers into places by classification. Thus, Yeager’s competitor one lane over was a neighbor in more ways than one, Olympia’s Eli Champagne, who won the 4A 100 fly in a state-qualifying time of 54.27.

Champagne’s win — in the third-fastest 4A time this season — was the opposite of breathtaking.

“Not taking a lot of breaths was key,” he said. “I only took one during the first 50 and four in the second 50. My dolphin kick underwater was going well, too.”

Earlier, Champagne finished less than one second behind teammate Andrew Wright, who won the 200 individual medley in 2:05.6.

Olympia finished third in the 4A team standings with 259 points and punctuated the meet with a state-qualifying 3:22.06 in the final event of the night, the 400 free relay, with Champagne, Wright, Ben Matthews and James Waltz swimming.

North Thurston’s Justin Ridgeway won the 100 breast in 1:02.88 and teammate Jeffrey Harn, a sophomore, won the 100 free in 51.17 to pace the Rams to a second-place finish in 3A.

Ridgeway and Harn also swam, along with Lucas Johnson and Logan Anderton, on Thurston’s 200 medley relay team, which got the meet off to a blazing start, winning in a state-qualifying 1:44.36, the second-fastest 3A time this season. Bainbridge has the fastest mark at 1:38.79.

Olympia’s 200 free relay squad of Matthew Kamimura, Zach Walker, Matthews and Waltz won in a 4A state-qualifying time of 1:31.75, an improvement of more than one second from the Bears’ seed time and the fourth-fastest time in Washington this year.

“We had 40 guys swim today and 29 had season’s bests,” said Olympia coach Mel Smith.

Two Shelton divers posted 3A state qualifying scores. Jon Wetzel won the event in 393.95 and Troy Krumpols was second in 357.45

This story was originally published January 29, 2016 at 10:34 PM with the headline "Bears, Rams top South Sound finishers in Narrows boys swim."