By Ralph Amsden

Records fell in bunches Saturday at the Arizona state swimming championships, on both the boys and girls side.

Chaparral’s girls took home a team championship behind freshman and swimmer of the year Taylor Ruck’s individual wins in the 200 and 500 yard freestyle and a team relay win in the 200 yard individual medley. Ruck’s time of 1:46.76 in the 200 yard freestyle bested her own state record from the preliminaries the day before.

Ruck seemed to be pleased with the atmosphere of her first state meet at Mesa's Skyline Aquatic Center.

“I really like the high school atmosphere rather than competing based on age group,” Ruch said.  

On the boys’ side, Brophy scored 341 points to win their 27^th consecutive state title. The Brophy team of Thomas Ottman, Isaiah Williams, Grady Ottomeyer and Jack Blake put up a time of 3:03.93 in the 400 yard freestyle relay to shave over a second off the prior state record.

Some individuals expected to set new records and Chandler’s Mark Jurek and boys swimmer of the year Ryan Hoffer of Chaparral did exactly that. Jurek swam a time of 1:47.03 in the 200 yard Individual medley, setting a new state record.

He went on to tie the state record of 47.80 in the 100 yard butterfly and still thought he had room to improve.

“I had some errors in my race,” Jurek said.  “I’ll have to remember what I did wrong and improve on it.

“It’s good and bad to know you could have done better but know that if you fix those things you’ll improve.”

Chaparral’s Hoffer set records in both the 50 yard freestyle (19.53) and the 100 yard freestyle (43.20), and credited the skill of his fellow competitors for helping him attain such fast times. 

“Connor Stirling and Jack Blake are great,” he said. “I always seem to go faster when there’s bigger competition that can push me like that.”

One record that was broken at the state meet even surprised the swimmer that broke it.

Horizon’s Ben Olszewski cut almost six seconds off the previous state record in the 500 yard freestyle to set a new record of 4:21.48.

“I had no idea I had that time in me,” Olszewski said. “I was just aiming for 4:25 to be honest. From this point on I’ll be training even harder to see what I can do.”

Other individual boys winners at the D1 state meet include:

Connor Stirling (Cactus Shadows) 200 freestyle, Joshua Vedder (Desert Vista) 100 backstroke, Matt Anderson (Arcadia ) 100 breaststroke, Emmot Blitch (Sunnyslope) diving.

For the girls:

Savannah Carlson (Arcadia) 200 Individual medley and 100 freestyle, Sam Fazio (Pinnacle) 50 freestyle, Katie Shanahan (Desert Mountain) 100 butterfly, Matti Harrison (Arcadia) 100 backstroke, Alyson Yancy (Pinnacle) 100 breaststroke, Skylar Williams (O’Connor) diving.