Seniors Sarah Hewitt and Brad Wolthuis, junior Megan Hager, sophomore Hunter Calderwood and freshmen Malia Hewitt, Jamie Seward and Chloe Tyler shared Outstanding Swimmer honors Feb. 21 at the swimming team’s awards dinner.
Coach Doug Peargin said the Huskies had “a great season” that ended with the girls winning an upset state championship.
“We didn’t have a lot of boys to start with,” Peargin said. “I knew we had a pretty good girls team coming in. We had quite a few kids on the team who wanted to be better. I didn’t know if we could win, but I knew we had a top-four team in state.”
After Sweet Home’s first meet, he said, “I knew we had a shot. I could see there wasn’t one of them there that wasn’t going to give 100 percent.”
The combination of talent, depth, experience and a lot of hard work were the difference for Sweet Home, particularly at state, he said.
“We swam on Friday (in the preliminaries), 24 races. The kids had 24 swims. Out of 24 swims, I think we had 21 lifetime-best times. We only had five swimmers in the meet. We had the smallest girls team there.
“And we had the smallest boys team there,” he added, drawing a laugh from the crowd. Sweet Home’s only boy who qualified was Wolthuis.
“I had several coaches and a couple of officials just ask, ‘How do those kids compete that hard?’ Peargin said. “I said, ‘They believe in what they’re doing, they’re in shape and they think they can win.”
In addition to the contributions and leadership of team captains Hewitt and Hager on the girls side and Wolthuis for the boys, Peargin praised the three freshman girls who qualified for state: Mahlia Hewitt, Seward and Tyler, who all placed in individual events in addition to swimming relay legs.
The 200 Medley Relay team of Seward, Mahlia Hewitt, Hager and Sarah Hewitt, which set a school record of 1:51.09 to place first and give the Huskies a running start in scoring at the state meet, exceeded his expectations, he said.
“To say those guys would beat that school record, when two of those girls that held that record got full rides to Division I (swimming programs) and we had (two) freshmen swim – the odds against that are high. And those kids reached that and did it. And that set the tone for the meet. Our kids saw they could win.”
He said Tyler opted to swim the 200 (in which she placed third) and the 100 (placing sixth) freestyles, instead of the 500 Freestyle, so she could swim a leg of the winning 200 Freestyle Relay, as well as the 400 Freestyle Relay, in which the Huskies placed second.
“She competes with everything she’s got,” he said. “These kids never batted an eye, going up against seniors – 17- and 18-year-old kids,” he said. “It was just something to watch.”
His praise didn’t stop with the state qualifiers.
“I always think the district championships are great, because you get to come there as a team and the kids that have worked hard all year long get to do a job in there and see if they can place in that district meet and from there go on to state.
“From the hundreds of kids that are out for swimming, it’s only the top 12 in every event. It really gets crisp and tough at that meet. You really have to be ready to go. At district and state they did the best they could possibly do.
“I was really proud of them. I’m looking forward to seeing what they can do next year, because we have quite a few of them coming back, and I know we have some really good ones. You guys who are coming back have some big shoes to fill. But you’ve done it every year and you just have to make the determination right now that that’s what you have to do.”
He said he could say “almost with complete certainty” that the 12 qualifiers in each event at the state championships put in time in the pool beyond the high school season.
“You’ve gotta have yardage and you’ve gotta have constructive practice to be at that level. If you’re content to stay at the district meet, which is great, and place in that, we can get you enough yards to get you in that and get it done there, maybe. But boy, I’ll tell you, you get to that next step, you’ve got to go some other than the high school season.”
He urged the swimmers to take advantage of summer workouts or to compete in other sports.
“I’ll tell you, it’s better than sitting around on the couch and eating potato chips and drinking Pepsi, because that’s hard to come back from.
“The main thing I’m saying is keep active. You’ve got to keep active. If you don’t, you’ll go downhill.”
The boys team, Peargin said, adding that the program graduated “a ton” of “quality swimmers” in the previous two years. last year” and had only nine members this year, all but three of whom had no high school swimming experience. Nonetheless, the Huskies finished seventh out of 11 teams at the district meet.
“If we’d had 15, we might have won it,” Peargin said. “I was proud of those kids, how they did what they did.”
Wolthuis and fellow senior Dakota Seward received their fourth letter; sophomore Hunter Calderwood received his second; and first-year letters went to senior Seth Gaylord and sophomore Chase Lopez, both newcomers to high school swimming, and to freshmen Bill Hawken, Jacob Kennedy and Micah Wright.
On the girls side, fourth-year letters went to seniors Sarah Hewitt and Ella Parker.
Third-year letter winners were juniors Hager, Moira Curtis and Torree Hawken.
Second-year letter recipients were senior Katrina Reynolds, juniors Brook Womack and Lauren Taber, and sophomores Isabel Rodriguez and Maren Weld.
First-year letters went to freshmen Tyler, Meagan Baham, Malia Hewitt, Isabel Sayer, Jamie Seward and Bailey Womack.