By Brenda Sexton | The Courier-Herald
Bonney Lake, Enumclaw and Sumner swimmers and divers took their first step toward the Class 3A state meet by qualifying for the West Central District III championships during the South Puget Sound League-Western Cascade Conference subdistrict meet Oct. 23 and 24 at the Enumclaw Aquatic Center.
Swimmers were racing the clock in the 11-team meet. Only those with district times advance to the West Central District III meet Nov. 6 and 7 at Hazen High in Renton. Athletes who posted district times during the regular season also advance.
The SPSL and WCC teams will be joined by teams from the Olympic and Seamount leagues.
Diving preliminaries begin at 10 a.m. Nov. 6 with swimming at 5 p.m. The Nov. 7 swim finals begin at 3 p.m.
The top six place winners advance to state.
Sumner
Several Sumner swimmers have already posted state times and will automatically advance, like the Spartans’ 200-yard medley relay team of Taylor Ditty, Emma Thompson, Ashley Huynh and Sami Hendricks which won the subdistrict event and posted a state time of 1 minute, 56.06 seconds.
The same Spartan foursome won the 200 freestyle relay with a state time of 1:45.12.
Ditty and Hendricks finished one-two in the 100 freestyle with state times of 55.21 and 55.87, respectively. Ditty won the 100 backstroke with a state time of 1:01.46.
Sumner’s second 200 medley relay of Jamie Morey, Lizzie Kressler, Katie Ekse and Kallan Gustafson finished ninth with a district time of 2:13.89.
Hendricks finished second in the 200 freestyle with a district time of 2:02.33.
Thompson finished third in the 100 butterfly with a district time of 1:04.58, while Kressler was seventh with a district time of 1:09.11
Gustafson raced to a fifth-place 6:02.64 district-qualifying time in the 500 freestyle.
Thompson was eighth in the backstroke in a district time of 1:08.45.
Huynh was fourth in the 100 breaststroke with a district time of 1:15.69.
Sumner’s 400 freestyle relay of Kressler, Morey, Ekse and Gustafson was fourth in 4:25.73.
Enumclaw
Enumclaw’s weekend closed with a number of individual and relay district times, starting with its 200 medley relay team of Lindsay Bowden, Bella Davenport, Erin Stucker and Erin Wessel that finished fourth with a district time of 2:04.64.
Rachel Holston finished seventh in the 200 freestyle with a district time of 2:16.08
Davenport finished seventh in the 200 individual medley with a district time of 2:13.18 and second in the 100 breaststroke with a district time of 1:14.21.
Erica Bonthuis finished third in diving with 263.30 points.
Bowden was eighth in the 100 butterfly with a time of 1:09.42. She also scored a district time in the 100 backstroke with a sixth-place 1:08.55.
EHS’s 200 freestyle team of Wessel, Bowden, Holston and Stucker raced to fifth-place in a district time of 1:55.24. Enumclaw’s second team of Davenport, Carly Hinman, Jamie Ritzdorf and Ali Ballard also set a district pace at 1:55.74.
Bonney Lake
Elise Duncan finished fifth in the 50 freestyle, just missing a district time, however, she qualified for district’s in the season’s final regular meet with a 27.48 time.
Kelsi Potterf, last year’s No. 6 diver in the state, has qualified for state again.
