Slideshow | Swim\/Dive Championships<\/a>]<\/p>\nThe Crimson Bears girls, edged out by Dimond High School, finished second in team scoring overall.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t say enough about these girls, how they just get their heads down and go,\u201d Cayce said after the meet. \u201cThey really rise to the occasion. All of them dropped time in their races this weekend.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
The girls 200 medley relay team didn\u2019t 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\u2019s third time winning the event in four years.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think our team just works so well together,\u201d Mertz said. \u201cIt was great to start the meet out on a high note, it feels really, really good.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u2014 half a pool length ahead of North Pole\u2019s Jessica Williamson.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Ruffin won all four of the events she competed in, which is the maximum ASAA allows.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt 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,\u201d Ruffin said.<\/p>\n
Kito added a second-place finish in the 500 freestyle, which helped fend off third place Sitka.<\/p>\n
Cayce gushed about how impressed he was with the girls, who were freshmen when he began coaching.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a bit of an emotional meet,\u201d he said. \u201cThese girls have been here since the beginning for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
TMHS sophomores set tone with four titles<\/strong><\/p>\nThunder 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, we\u2019re all sophomores, and we won it against all those upperclassmen, so it\u2019s going to be great the next couple of years,\u201d Davis said of the 200 medley relay.<\/p>\n
Following JDHS\u2019 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.<\/p>\n
Ray, as the freestyle anchor for the 200 medley relay team, said he was feeling the pressure when his time came.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs the freestyler, I felt like it was either win or get last. I tried to keep that in mind. It was all or nothing,\u201d Ray said.<\/p>\n
Later in the day, Holt added his title in the 100 butterfly.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt went really well. It was a close, fast race this year,\u201d Holt said. He beat out Colony\u2019s Jake Simmons by just 35 hundredths of a second for the title in that event, finishing with a 50.84 time to Simmons\u2019 51.19. Holt also posted a fourth-place finish in the 200 freestyle, which helped the boys to their third-place finish overall.<\/p>\n
Davis added a complement to Holt\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cA 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,\u201d Davis said. \u201cThat\u2019s a big part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Davis added that he thinks a state record in the medley relay isn\u2019t out of reach for the talented underclassmen and that they\u2019re all \u201creally excited\u201d for what the next few years will bring for the program.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Juneau at the ASAA swim\/dive state championship<\/strong><\/p>\nTeam scoring:<\/strong><\/p>\nGirls \u2014 1. Dimond, 95; 2. JDHS, 82.5; 3. Sitka, 68.5; 4. Kodiak, 54; 5. Chugiak, 38.<\/p>\n
Boys \u2014 1. Kodiak, 105; 2. Dimond; 86; 3. TMHS, 62; 4. Soldotna, 61; 5. Eagle River, 47.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Girls<\/strong><\/p>\n200 medley relay \u2014 1st: Mertz, Ruffin, Kito, Mulgrew-Truitt (JDHS). 1:51.75<\/p>\n
200 freestyle \u2014 5th: Howard (JDHS) 2:03.07<\/p>\n
200 individual medley \u2014 1st: Ruffin (JDHS) 2:06.38<\/p>\n
50 freestyle \u2014 3rd: Mulgrew-Truitt (JDHS) 0:25.22<\/p>\n
100 butterfly \u2014 5th: Kito (JDHS) 1:00.66<\/p>\n
500 freestyle \u2014 2nd: Kito (JDHS) 5:18.47<\/p>\n
200 freestyle relay \u2014 5th: Norvell, Moran, Howard, Mulgrew-Truitt (JDHS) 1:43.68<\/p>\n
100 breaststroke \u2014 1st: Ruffin (JDHS) 1:05.82<\/p>\n
400 freestyle relay \u2014 1st: Kito, Howard, Mulgrew-Truitt, Ruffin (JDHS) 3:40.76<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Boys<\/strong><\/p>\n200 medley relay \u2014 1st: Post, Davis, Holt, Ray (TMHS) 1:38.58<\/p>\n
200 freestyle \u2014 4th: Holt (TMHS) 1:44.68<\/p>\n
200 individual medley \u2014 1st: Davis (TMHS) 1:54.75<\/p>\n
100 butterfly \u2014 1st: Holt (TMHS) 50.84<\/p>\n
500 freestyle \u2014 7th: Chris Ray (TMHS) 4:57.33<\/p>\n
200 freestyle relay \u2014 8th: Post, Matiashowski, Grigg, Ray (TMHS) 1:35.58<\/p>\n
100 backstroke \u2014 5th: Aiden Seid (JDHS) 0:55.12<\/p>\n
100 breaststroke \u2014 1st: Davis (TMHS) 58.03<\/p>\n
400 freestyle relay \u2014 5th: Davis, Grigg, Ray, Holt (TMHS) 3:20.43; 8th: Seid, Goering, Weldon, Schumacher (JDHS) 3:24.19<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In a fitting close to a stellar prep swimming career, eight-time state champion Mia Ruffin, the Crimson Bears\u2019 400-yard freestyle relay anchor, ended Saturday\u2019s state swim and dive championships with a comeback win. Ruffin went into the final leg of that event trailing Dimond\u2019s Breckynn Willis by more than a body length. She made the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":16251,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-16250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16250"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=16250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}