The competition for the team title at this weekend’s Kansas High School Boys’ 5A-1A State Swimming and Diving Championships came down to the final event and the very smallest of margins.
Going into the 400 free relay, the boys of Maize High School were down by 5.5 points, and they knew that they had to win the event over Wichita Heights in order to win the championship. The race was a nail-biter all the way through the finish, when the Maize team of Preston Barley, Christian Taylor, Brett Young, and Harrison Shively out-touched the Wichita Heights team by just .05 seconds, 3:16.07 to 3:16.12.
The 400 free relay win propelled Maize to an overall 280 points, just half a point over defending champion Wichita Heights’s 279.5.
See live results here, and team scores here.
Maize only won one other event during the meet, the 200 free, which Barley finished in 1:46.07. Instead of taking top places to score points, their victory came from placing multiple swimmers in the A and B finals. Their relay teams also took second in both the other relays for big points, swimming the 200 medley relay in 1:39.45 and the 200 free relay in 1:30.32. The Maize team also won a huge points from a runner-up performance from Barley in the 100 free with 48.33 and a third place finish from Taylor in the 100 breast with 1:00.70.
Wichita Heights won two of the three relays during the competition, including the 200 medley, which Aidan Gantenbein, Creighton Sanders, Dawson Gantenbein, and Joel Alderson swam in 1:38.41. Their 200 free relay, Ethan Conrady, Alderson, Noah Childs, and Dylan Jensen, took the event in 1:29.95.
Trinity Academy freshman Ben Patton won the 200 IM by nearly three seconds, clocking 1:54.24 to second-place Maginn Anderson of St. James Academy’s 1:57.53. Both swimmers improved vastly from their prelims swims of 1:59. Patton also won the 100 back in 50.98.
Rose Hill saw a handful of wins. Senior Gavin Smith won the 50 free by a narrow margin of under a tenth of a second, taking the event in 21.47. He doubled up by also winning the 100 fly in 51.88. Smith’s teammate Noah Baden won the 500 free by four seconds, finishing in 4:46.33. Baden then came back to win the 100 breast in 58.60.
El Dorado’s Keagan Wilson won the 100 free title in 47.72, and the 1 meter diving gold went to Bishop Meige senior Jacob Stockton with 410.30 points,
That is awesome