FEDERAL WAY
Freshman Phillip Walczak of Archbishop Murphy took home the school’s first state medal in swimming with a third-place finish in the 500-yard freestyle.
Walczak clocked in with a time of 5 minutes, 12.62 seconds, Saturday afternoon, Feb. 21 at the at the state 2A swim and dive championships at the King County
Aquatic Center in Federal Way.
This is the Wildcats first year of competition in boys and girls swimming and Walczak said he hopes to have more success in the future.
Walczak took a week off before the meet to go on a ski trip and rested but was able to turn a strong state meet performance.
Archbishop Murphy’s 400 freestyle relay team of Walczak, junior Patrick Throckmorton, junior Nick Pursley and junior Arden Hunter took home an eighth-place medal with a time of 3:44.58.
“It went great, it really did,” Walczak said. “We improved a lot if we were told we’d have four guys going 57 (seconds) or slower (in the 400 free relay splits) we wouldn’t have believed it but we have it.”
Hunter took seventh in the 100 backstroke with a time of 1:01.12. He swam a 59.84 in the preliminaries.
The Wildcats 200 freestyle relay also qualified for state but was disqualified in the preliminaries.
Archbishop Murphy finished 13th overall with 10 points. Sehome won the 2A state title with 142 points.
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