Shawnee Mission East takes crown back from Free State, wins 6th state girls swim title
Shawnee Mission East’s girls swimming team remembered what second place felt like. And it wasn’t for them.
The Lancers took their sixth 6A state title in seven years on Saturday, a year after losing the crown to Lawrence Free State. SM East took first in all the relays Saturday (200-yard medley, 200-yard freestyle and 400-yard freestyle), after three runner-up finishes in 2015.
“That was actually really tough to come back from that,” senior Sarah Allegri said. “It still kind of blows my mind how fast we were then, and it just motivated us even more this year.”
Sophomore Hannah McPhail produced the closest win of the day for SM East, and the one that brought the most deafening crowd noise. In the final leg of the medley relay, McPhail’s outstretched fingers made it to the wall a quarter of a second before those of Free State’s Sydney Sirimongkhon-Dyck. The Lancers’ 1:49.21 time was enough, but only just.
“It was a nail-biter,” SM East coach Rob Cole said. “We were in that position last year where we had the lead going into the last five yards, and got touched out. It was very gratifying that we could hold on this time and push for the win.”
SM East took the team championship with 386 points, ahead of Free State (289) and Olathe Northwest (260).
The Lancers rode the momentum from those three relay wins, but took several individual titles, too. Crissie Blomquist, the 6A swimmer of the meet, won her second 500-yard freestyle state championship in a row. She also took the 200-yard freestyle race, in which she was runner-up last year.
Senior Sarah Allegri came two-hundredths of a second away from tying a state record in the 100-yard backstroke. She swam the distance in 55.65 seconds, just five minutes after she competed in the 200-yard freestyle relay.
“I just tried to nail my underwater and really bring it home,” Allegri said. “That was actually pretty tough.”
For Shawnee Mission Northwest, Hailey Brull won the 100-yard butterfly in 56.85 seconds. Shawnee Mission North’s Joely Merriman took the 100-yard freestyle in 52.32 seconds.
Blue Valley Southwest wins fourth straight title
Blue Valley Southwest girls swimming coach Arvel McElroy, still wearing street clothes, joined hands with his team and jumped straight into the pool at the Capitol Federal Natatorium on Saturday afternoon.
The team had just won their fourth straight 5-1A Kansas state title, and a waterlogged celebration felt like the right one.
Three seniors — Maddie Allen, Madison Ruffalo and Gabbi Miller — along with sophomore Madison Batkiewicz made up the winning 200-yard freestyle relay team for Southwest, which won in 1:42.59
Seniors Logan Johnsen (100-yard breaststroke) and Isabelle Finzen (200-yard individual medley) both took individual championships. Johnsen also came in second in the individual medley behind her teammate.
Saturday was the culmination of an era’s dominance for BV Southwest.
“Everybody says, ‘oh, reload,’ ” McElroy said. “But it’s going to take a big, big, big class to reload and (do) what this class has accomplished.”
BV Southwest won the team championship with 312 points over second-place Bishop Miege (249) and third-place St. Thomas Aquinas (191).
Miege benefited from having the flashiest individual performance of the day, from junior Cailey Grunhard. A day after setting a state record in the 100-yard butterfly, she broke it again with a 53.26-second performance.
And that was only one of her state records from the day.
Grunhard set a new Kansas record in the backstroke (55.15 seconds) and was on Miege’s 200-yard medley relay team that set its own state standard of 1:47.33.
As she stepped to the podium to collect her first-place medal in the butterfly — her signature event, and the distance in which she’s held the last three state records — Grunhard looked on at a standing ovation.
This story was originally published May 21, 2016 at 7:37 PM with the headline "Shawnee Mission East takes crown back from Free State, wins 6th state girls swim title."