Freshman Lucas Brandt and sophomore Cameron McLennan represented Philomath High School on the medal stand Saturday at the 4A/3A/2A/1A State Championships in Beaverton.
Brandt placed third in the 500-yard freestyle and fourth in the 200-yard individual medley while McLennan was sixth in the 100-yard butterfly.
With those eight points, Philomath’s boys finished just outside the top 10 in the team standings in a three-way tie for 11th. Newport swept the boys and girls team titles.
Brandt entered the state meet with the top time in the 500 freestyle but La Grande junior Zane Ricker had apparently been holding back in his district meet. Ricker competed at a pace that the others could not match with a finals time of 4:46.83 — not a meet record but nearly 11 seconds ahead of runner-up Micah Hugo, a senior from Marist Catholic. Brandt’s third-place time in finals was 4:58.48, which was 0.19 of a second off his personal record that was set in the district meet at Albany.
Ricker came out fast to establish first place with a lead that had grown to 5.28 seconds through the first 200 yards. Meanwhile, Hugo, Brandt and Sweet Home junior RJ Abbott were battling in the second, third and fourth positions.
Abbott started to fade at about the halfway point of the race to leave a Hugo-Brandt battle for second. The two swimmers have a familiarity with one another in the event with Brandt edging Hugo for first place at the district meet. About 300 to 400 yards in, Hugo started to separate with a lead that grew to 1.55 seconds with 100 yards to go. Brandt had a stronger finish and had the fastest final 50 yards of any entrant at 27.86 seconds.
But Hugo was able to hang on to second place with Brandt third, Abbott fourth, Phoenix freshman Quin Davis fifth and Cascade Christian freshman Myles Anderson sixth.
In the 200 IM, Brandt came out of Friday’s preliminaries in fourth with a time of 2:03.93. Catlin Gabel junior Adam Li won the race by a considerable margin with a time of 1:56.14. Newport junior Ben Hurty edged North Bend senior Finley Cheal for second with times of 1:59.03 and 1:59.85, respectively. Brandt placed fourth in 2:03.85 and was more than 5 seconds ahead of the fifth- and sixth-place finishers.
Brandt holds Philomath High’s school record in the 200 IM with a 2:03.39. The individual medley combines four strokes — butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle.
McLennan qualified in the sixth and final spot in the 100 fly during Friday’s prelims with a time of 58.26, which was more than a second faster than the first swimmer out in seventh. In the finals, Catlin Gabel senior Hodge Dauler won in 50.98 seconds, which was a little less than a second and a half off the 4A/3A/2A/1A record of 49.52 set in 2012. The pace was intense in the finals with McLennan finishing with 50-yard splits of 27.67 and 32.08 for an overall time of 59.75.
Also for the boys, senior Henry Katsikis qualified in the 100-yard breaststroke and finished 11th Friday during prelims in 1:12.27.
For the girls, junior Kyah Weeber represented the Warriors in two events. Weeber had an eighth-place finish overall in the 100-yard breaststroke with a prelims time of 1:16.02. In the 100-yard butterfly, she was 11th in prelims with a 1:03.58.
