Sammamish’s boys swim and dive team won all three relays on its way to the first 2A state title in program history.
The Totems finished with 334 points to beat out Anacortes (289.5) to win the championship on Feb. 22 at the King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way.
After winning their district championship and having a strong showing in the prelims on Feb. 21, Sammamish head coach Paul Craig said they felt good about where they were heading into finals.
“We had an inkling this was a possibility, but we didn’t want to talk about it too much,” Craig said. “As long as we didn’t make any mistakes, then we would probably do pretty well.”
Going into finals, Craig said he was nervous, especially for the first race, which was the 200-yard medley relay.
“Get that first race out of the way and that would kind of set the tone for the whole meet,” Craig said.
The Totems definitely set a tone in the first race, winning the medley relay. The medley relay team of Jarod Schahrer, Zuriahn Yun, Luke Hanson and Teno Kao set a school record with their time of 1:36.69.
From there, the Totems continued to swim strong, with Schahrer winning the 200-yard individual medley (1:54.21) and the 200-yard freestyle relay team (Hanson, Zongxin Yang, Daniel Gutzwiler and Edmund Davis) taking first (1:29.30).
Schahrer won his second individual race, by taking first in the 100-yard backstroke (51.66). The Totems wrapped up the state title by winning the 400-yard freestyle relay (Davis, Gutzwiler, Colin Berger and Schahrer) with a time of 3:14.90.
The Totems had lots of depth to choose from at the state meet and all of their swimmers were needed to succeed.
“We had 10 guys at the state meet all scoring points,” Craig said. “They might not have been in the top eight, but they were scoring points. I had the luxury of mixing and matching some relays and we would still be as fast.”
Amongst the 10 swimmers competing at state for Sammamish was their three outgoing seniors, Hanson, Berger and Kao. Craig said all three performed exceptionally well at state.
