JDHS girls bookend careers as state runners-up

In a fitting close to a stellar prep swimming career, eight-time state champion Mia Ruffin, the Crimson Bears’ 400-yard freestyle relay anchor, ended Saturday’s state swim and dive championships with a comeback win. Ruffin went into the final leg of that event trailing Dimond’s Breckynn Willis by more than a body length.

She made the distance up and then some.

“I saw that Andyn (Mulgrew-Truitt, sophomore) kept the lead for second, so I just thought, ‘OK, I am just going to try and win this,’” Ruffin said of the final leg of the 400 relay. “I just heard ‘go, go!’ so I just went for it.”

Ruffin’s comeback win highlighted a stellar performance by JDHS’ three senior girls swimmers: Ruffin, Gabi Kito and Sarah Mertz. The trio took home two relay titles and two individual titles Saturday.

“I knew when she (Ruffin) dove in, that we got this,” JDHS coach Seth Cayce said. “Ruffin is arguably the best swimmer in the state and that’s why we have her anchoring our last relay.”

[Slideshow | Swim/Dive Championships]

The Crimson Bears girls, edged out by Dimond High School, finished second in team scoring overall.

“I can’t say enough about these girls, how they just get their heads down and go,” Cayce said after the meet. “They really rise to the occasion. All of them dropped time in their races this weekend.”

JDHS had two state titles in the books by noon Saturday at the Alaska School Activities Association Swim and Dive State Championships at Dimond Park Aquatic Center. The girls kicked off the finals with a win in the 200 medley relay with a team of Ruffin, Mertz, Kito and Andyn Mulgrew-Truitt.

The girls 200 medley relay team didn’t enter Ruffin in their Region V championships, leading to a fourth best seeding time of 1 minute, 55.84 seconds, a time they eclipsed by four seconds with a 1:51.75 finals finish. It was the team’s third time winning the event in four years.

“I think our team just works so well together,” Mertz said. “It was great to start the meet out on a high note, it feels really, really good.”

Four events later, Ruffin added a second title for the Crimson Bears with a win in the 200 individual medley. She crushed the field in that event, finishing nearly eight seconds ahead of her nearest competitor — half a pool length ahead of North Pole’s Jessica Williamson.

Ruffin has the best breastroke in the state, a rare talent invaluable in the medley, which requires swimmers to swim a lap each in the freestyle, breaststroke, butterfly and backstroke. She put that talent to use in the 100 breaststroke, which she won by nearly three seconds.

Ruffin won all four of the events she competed in, which is the maximum ASAA allows.

“It makes me really sad knowing that this is the last time I will swim at JDHS, but I am glad to go out on top,” Ruffin said.

Kito added a second-place finish in the 500 freestyle, which helped fend off third place Sitka.

Cayce gushed about how impressed he was with the girls, who were freshmen when he began coaching.

“It’s a bit of an emotional meet,” he said. “These girls have been here since the beginning for me.”

 

TMHS sophomores set tone with four titles

Thunder Mountain sophomores Spencer Holt, Bergen Davis, Noatak Post and Chris Ray will be a force to be reckoned with in years to come. The bigger problem for Alaska prep swimmers is that they already are.

The quartet won the 200 individual medley while Holt took home the title in the 100 butterfly and Davis stood atop the podium for the 200 individual medley and the 100 breaststroke.

“I mean, we’re all sophomores, and we won it against all those upperclassmen, so it’s going to be great the next couple of years,” Davis said of the 200 medley relay.

Following JDHS’ lead in the girls 200 medley relay, the Falcons boys won the 200 medley relay, making Juneau teams two for two to start the state finals. They won that event with a 1:38.58, nearly two seconds ahead of South.

Ray, as the freestyle anchor for the 200 medley relay team, said he was feeling the pressure when his time came.

“As the freestyler, I felt like it was either win or get last. I tried to keep that in mind. It was all or nothing,” Ray said.

Later in the day, Holt added his title in the 100 butterfly.

“It went really well. It was a close, fast race this year,” Holt said. He beat out Colony’s Jake Simmons by just 35 hundredths of a second for the title in that event, finishing with a 50.84 time to Simmons’ 51.19. Holt also posted a fourth-place finish in the 200 freestyle, which helped the boys to their third-place finish overall.

Davis added a complement to Holt’s expertise in the butterfly as the sophomore standout has one of the best breaststrokes in the state. That allowed him to take the 100 breaststroke as well as the 200 individual medley.

“A lot of time with the IMers (Individual Medley) the breaststroke is the weakest. Having that be my strongest, I am able to get ahead on the third 50,” Davis said. “That’s a big part of it.”

Davis added that he thinks a state record in the medley relay isn’t out of reach for the talented underclassmen and that they’re all “really excited” for what the next few years will bring for the program.

 

Juneau at the ASAA swim/dive state championship

Team scoring:

Girls — 1. Dimond, 95; 2. JDHS, 82.5; 3. Sitka, 68.5; 4. Kodiak, 54; 5. Chugiak, 38.

Boys — 1. Kodiak, 105; 2. Dimond; 86; 3. TMHS, 62; 4. Soldotna, 61; 5. Eagle River, 47.

 

Girls

200 medley relay — 1st: Mertz, Ruffin, Kito, Mulgrew-Truitt (JDHS). 1:51.75

200 freestyle — 5th: Howard (JDHS) 2:03.07

200 individual medley — 1st: Ruffin (JDHS) 2:06.38

50 freestyle — 3rd: Mulgrew-Truitt (JDHS) 0:25.22

100 butterfly — 5th: Kito (JDHS) 1:00.66

500 freestyle — 2nd: Kito (JDHS) 5:18.47

200 freestyle relay — 5th: Norvell, Moran, Howard, Mulgrew-Truitt (JDHS) 1:43.68

100 breaststroke — 1st: Ruffin (JDHS) 1:05.82

400 freestyle relay — 1st: Kito, Howard, Mulgrew-Truitt, Ruffin (JDHS) 3:40.76

 

Boys

200 medley relay — 1st: Post, Davis, Holt, Ray (TMHS) 1:38.58

200 freestyle — 4th: Holt (TMHS) 1:44.68

200 individual medley — 1st: Davis (TMHS) 1:54.75

100 butterfly — 1st: Holt (TMHS) 50.84

500 freestyle — 7th: Chris Ray (TMHS) 4:57.33

200 freestyle relay — 8th: Post, Matiashowski, Grigg, Ray (TMHS) 1:35.58

100 backstroke — 5th: Aiden Seid (JDHS) 0:55.12

100 breaststroke — 1st: Davis (TMHS) 58.03

400 freestyle relay — 5th: Davis, Grigg, Ray, Holt (TMHS) 3:20.43; 8th: Seid, Goering, Weldon, Schumacher (JDHS) 3:24.19