Tough day for local swimmers at Group AA championships

CHRISTIANSBURG — On a sub-par day overall for area swimmers at Saturday’s Group AA state championships, Staunton River junior Zak Dehli turned in the best finish, placing second in the 100-yard freestyle in 48.12 seconds, exactly one second faster than his eighth-place seed time.

“I was surprised,” said Dehli, who beat his senior brother Jordan Dehli (fifth in 48.38). “Everybody was ahead of me after the first 75 [yards] and the last 25, I just didn’t breathe. I just gave it all I had to finish hard.”

He placed sixth, one spot ahead of Jordan, in the 50 free in a personal-record time of 22.03.

“I was pretty happy with my time,” he said. “It’s always good to have your brother right there to push you.”

The brothers carried the Golden Eagles to a 15th-place team showing with 56 points at the Christiansburg Aquatic Center.

Jefferson Forest’s boys recorded the highest area team finish, tallying 94 points for 10th place. The Cavaliers featured third- and fifth-place performances from Caleb Williams in the 500 free (4:48.75) and 200 free (1:46.05) and fourth- and ninth-place showings from Blake Nowakowski in the 100 free (48.27) and 50 free (22.23).

“I dropped about a half-second off my times from [Friday’s preliminaries] in the 50 free and the 100 free and I made [YMCA] national cuts in both,” said Nowakowski, who will also swim the 400 IM and the 200 breast for Lynchburg at the spring Y-National meet in April.

Glass’ boys, who placed 14th overall with 63 points, were paced by sophomore Blake Proffitt. He finished fourth in the 100 breast in 1:00.84, improving on his PR by more than a second, and seventh in the 200 IM, where he was edged by Brookville’s Logan White (sixth in 2:00.29), who helped the Bees place 17th overall with 47 points.

“It was a really close race in all of my events today,” Proffitt said. “[White] just out-touched me [in the 200 IM]. In the 100 breast, everybody dropped [time]. It was so close. It’s just such a young heat with freshmen and sophomores so it’s going to be great for the next three years.”

Tabb, the boys team champion by a 223-220 margin over Hidden Valley, finished 1-2-3 in that 100 breast final and had four in the championship finals, including a freshman and two sophomores.

The Hilltoppers’ 200 medley relay team of Holden Easterbrook, Proffitt, Joel Graham and Zach Boedeker came in seventh in 1:43.15, seven-hundredths of a second faster than JF’s 10th-place team of Williams, Nowakowski, Taylor Morris and Stuart Blakely.

“I was really happy with Zach Boedeker,” Proffitt said. “He’s going super fast. He’s definitely the heart and soul of that relay.”

JF’s same foursome finished sixth in the 200 free relay in 1:31.63 with Glass taking 11th in 1:32.74.

“I was really proud of our time,” Nowakowski said. “We took two seconds off our best time and four seconds off our time from last year, when we placed fifth after a couple teams were disqualified.”

In the final event of the day, the Cavaliers’ girls 400 free relay was DQ’d when one of its swimmers left the launch pad two-hundredths of a second too soon, just like Brookville’s girls 200 free relay did on Friday, when the Bees would have set a school record by two seconds.

The false start cost JF’s girls six places in the team standings as they finished tied for 17th with 45 points, six points behind 14th-place Brookville (51).

Cavaliers senior Sarah Fredericksen placed fourth in both the 200 free (1:55.06) and 500 free (5:13.41).

“I swam a 5:07 [in Friday’s 500 preliminaries] and then I came back and swam a 5:13 today,” she said. “It happens. After the 200 free, I felt really sick. I don’t think I warmed down properly.”

Bees senior Amber Wingfield matched her third-place showing from last year in the 100 butterfly, finishing in 57.41, and won her consolation heat of the 100 breast in 1:08.06 for ninth place, though her time was faster than two swimmers in the championship heat.

“It was good, though it wasn’t my best time,” said Wingfield, who had a stomach flu earlier in the week. “My energy level from not eating right was kind of low.”

She also anchored Brookville’s 400 free relay which finished 10th in a school-record time of 3:47.95. Freshman Ashley Mauzy placed 11th in both the 500 free (5:21.41) and the 100 backstroke (1:01.61).

Glass’s girls were led by freshman CT Skorcz’s 12th-place showings in the 200 IM (2:16.38) and 100 breast (1:11.15).

Western Albemarle defended its girls team title with 262 points.