- January 29, 2022
- Oak Marr Rec Center, Oakton, Virginia
- SCY
- Meet results on Meet Mobile–VHSL 2022 Patriot District
Katherine Helms, a senior from South County High School won two individual events (200 IM, 100 breaststroke) and one relay (200 freestyle relay) at Patriot District Championships on Saturday. She also was part of the 2nd place 200 medley relay.
Helms has already committed to swim for North Carolina State University beginning in fall 2022.
In the 200 IM, Helms touched in a lifetime best 2:00.50, splitting a 56.96 for her first 100. She touched 3.5 seconds ahead of Rachel Jones (2:04.05). Jones, a senior at Robinson Secondary School will swim at University of North Carolina- Wilmington beginning this fall.
Helms won the 100 breaststroke in a personal best (1:02.55). She is known for excelling in all freestyle distances, backstroke, and fly. Even in an off-event, she won the race by 3.5 seconds. Since October 2021, Helms has dropped 4.6 seconds in the 100 breaststroke.
Helms anchored the winning 200 freestyle relay (1:36.49), anchoring in 22.29 seconds. The fastest split in the field by almost a second. In the 200 medley relay, Helms swam the freestyle leg (22.78), which helped the team finish second in the event (1:48.12), .82 second behind Woodson High School (1:47.30)
Jones touched 1st in the 500 freestyle (5:00.93), almost 10 seconds ahead of sophomore teammate Olivia Waugh (5:10.00). This was a personal best for Jones by two seconds.
On the boys side, senior Aiken Do of W.T. Woodson High School was also a triple winner (50 free, 100 breast, and 400 freestyle relay). He also was a member of the 2nd place 200 medley relay team. Do, SwimSwams #8 recruit in the class of 2022 will compete for Virginia Tech this fall.
Do led off the winning 400 freestyle relay (3:12.68) with a 47.83 second split. His breaststroke split on the 200 medley relay that took 2nd place was 25.25 seconds.
Do won the 50 free (20.89), .61 seconds ahead of South County High School Senior and Army-West Point commit Zac Leith (21.50).
In the 100 breaststroke, Do won with a time of 57.88 seconds. His lifetime best in the event is 54.68, which is from December 2020. Touching 2nd in the event was West Springfield High School senior Matthew Hartshorn (58.77), a Johns Hopkins commit for fall 2022. In 3rd was Fairfax High School junior Adam Boudjemaa (58.96) and in 4th was Lake Braddock High School senior Jack Renner (59.15), which rounded out the sub-1:00 field.
Lieth won the 100 back (50.62), a half-second ahead of sophomore JT Schmid (51.03) of Robinson Secondary School.
The meet format was switched to timed finals after the first night of the meet was canceled due to the weather.
W.T. Woodson High School won both the boys and girls district titles. Regional championships are set to take place February 11-12 2022, also at the Oak Marr Rec Center.
Last year, there were no traditional time standards for regional or state championships. The only way to qualify for the next meet in the championships was finishing in the top-six at the preceding meet. Which is why last year, swimmers competed in the same events at all championship meets. This year, Virginia has returned to the traditional method where swimmers may swim any individual event that they have a cut in, but are limited to two individual events and two relays.
At regional championships, semifinals will take place on Friday, and finals will occur on Saturday.
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Wow!