By Clarissa Olson Posted May 22, 2018
Boys swimming members Hunter Lewis, Nathan Perkinson, Tristan Miller, and Evan Jepsen ended their season with a trip to state, where they tied with North Tahoe for 10th place.
Lewis, Perkinson, Miller, and Jepsen competed in the 200-yard medley relay, finishing 8th at 2:00.72. The team of four also came in 8th in the 400-yard freestyle relay, with 4:07.57. Lewis finished sixth in the 100-yard backstroke at 1:05.13. Coming in fourth, Perkinson brought home a time of 1:05.94 in the 100-yard breaststroke.
“The guys did a great job at state,” said Ruff. “All of them swam really well. Hunter moved up a seat, Nathan cut another second off that record, and both of the relays were really strong.”
State competition proved to be different than the rest of the year.
“State was kind of interesting because instead of having multiple heats for different events, you had one heat per gender of every event, and there were breaks in between,” said Ruff. “They had music every time somebody walked up to the block, and they announced the names and stuff.”
Competition and alliances between the teams shifted as well.
“What I think was really neat is that it always came down to a North vs South thing,” said Ruff. “Even if we didn’t have people swimming in an event we were usually cheering for Tahoe, Truckee, Sage Ridge, somebody.”
Regulations for admittance into the competition were changed, and had an effect on the team.
“What we kind of started doing was looking at the times for last place in each of the events,” said Ruff. “With the way that it’s structured now, where it’s three qualifiers from the north and five from the south, the eighth place finishes, a lot of the time, were slower than a lot of the northern swimmers swam, Lowry or not. We had a couple more people who could’ve gone to state if they took the top four.”
Despite this, Ruff is pleased with the performance of the team.
“It’s hard to compete against Truckee, Boulder City, and some of them, but the people we did get to send did a great job,” she said.
