South sectional ends in a tie

By Morris Malakoff

Herald Writer

MUKILTEO – They all knew it would be close. Maybe not this close, but close.

When the dual meet season ended for the teams of the Western Conference South Division, Kamiak, Shorewood and Jackson found themselves tied atop the standings.

Saturday’s southern half of the 4A Northwest District meet, held at Kamiak, did little to break the deadlock. When the last swimmer had climbed from the pool, Shorewood and Kamiak had tied for the sectional championship with 283 points. Third-place Jackson sat nine points behind the leaders.

Shorewood coach Bill Murray thought it might come down to this type of finish months ago.

“We knew going into the beginning of the Wesco season it was going to be close. We had to guess where Jackson was, but we knew.”

Murray was referring to how Jackson would adjust to swimming at the 4A level and how much of a graduating class they could successfully replace.

“As soon as they develop a few more swimmers, well, they will be very tough next year.”

Going into the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay, Shorewood, Kamiak and Jackson were separated by 19 points. With the points doubled in relay events, the meet title was still up for grabs, with the winner adding 32 points to its total.

That race was a stroke-for-stroke affair between Jackson and Shorewood. It was close enough that it may have been decided by a design quirk at the edge of the pool.

As Shorewood’s Garrett Gentling approached the pool wall to finish the third leg of the relay, teammate Alex Fleet prepared to launch from the starting block. Fleet swung his arms and lurched forward, catching his left hand on the support structure of the diving platform that is installed permanently next to the starting blocks. While the contact did not cause an injury, it distracted and delayed Fleet just long enough to allow Jackson swimmer Matt Warren to open up a lead in the anchor leg.

Fleet pursued Warren the length of the pool, trailing by as much as a body length. In the final 50 yards, Warren led going into the turnaround. In the final 25-yard stretch, Fleet cut the lead to half a body length. For Fleet, the pool ran out before he could overtake Warren.

That second-place finish, combined with a fourth-place finish by Kamiak assured the tie.

With the exception of the second-place finish in the 400 freestyle relay, Fleet may have been the swimmer of the meet.

Coming off damage to both of his rotator cuffs in an auto accident in October, Fleet was part of a winning 200 medley relay squad and picked up individual titles in the 200 individual medley and the 100 backstroke. Fleet’s 2:00.31 in the IM was a personal best.

Edmonds-Woodway got a power performance out of senior Nick Tainter.

Tainter opened his meet with a blowout of the rest of the field in the 200 freestyle. Tainter’s winning time of 1:49.04 was nearly four seconds ahead of the next swimmer. In the 500 freestyle race, it was the same story as Tainter outdistanced the competition by more than four seconds.

The weapon Kamiak brought to the meet that was unmatched by either Jackson or Shorewood was diver Adam Dudek. Jackson had no divers entered and Shorewood’s entrants finished fifth and ninth for a combined 14 points. It was not enough as Dudek ran away from the 10-diver field with a winning margin of 61.75 points over runner-up Chad Bonner of Mariner. That win added 16 points to the Kamiak total.

Kamiak coach Chris Erickson was satisfied with his team’s efforts and looks forward to this week’s state meet in Federal Way.

Erickson feels that his team is peaking at the right time.

“If you scored it from yesterday’s results (the preliminary events), we were behind Shorewood by almost 30 and Jackson by 50,” said Erickson. “We made up a lot of ground.”

Class 3A Northwest District meet: Meadowdale’s Jonathan Keane, who finished second in the 200-yard freestyle in 1:52.16, was the only Western conference swimmer to qualify for next week’s state meet at Federal Way.

Team scores-Sehome 295, Anacortes 291, Meadowdale 166, Squalicum 165, Bellingham 131, Lynden 96, Ferndale 72, Sedro-Woolley 41, Burlington-Edison 33, Lynnwood 10.