Saturday was a great day to be a Highlander Swimmer as the Hazen boys swam away with the West District 3A title and several Highlanders brought home first-place indidviual finishes.
With Highlander swimmers finishing in the top six in almost every event, Hazen was able take the top team spot away from Seamount champs and perennial favorites Kennedy, scoring 206 points to the Lancers’ 203.
Senior Connor Broughton won two events for Hazen and fellow senior Nolan Hoover and junior Derek Wei also each took home a first-place finish.
The tone was set early as Kennedy and Hazen raced into the finish of the 200-yard medley relay less than a second apart with the Highlander team of Hoover, Broughton, Wei and Sergio Licea-Montes just getting out-touched at the wall by less than 0.7 seconds by the Kennedy team.
It happened again in the next event as Licea-Montes finished just second in the 200-yard freestyle to a Kennedy swimmer.
But in the 200-yard individual medley, the Highlanders placed two boys on the podium as Connor Broughton easily won the race with a time of 1:29.16 and Kien Nguyen finished sixth at 2:16.70.
Hoover kept it going, finishing fifth in the 50-yard freestyle with a time a 22.82 and missing fourth-place by just 0.02 seconds.
Hazen again placed two swimmers on the podium in the 100-yard butterfly with Licea-Montes and Wei finishing second and third, respectively.
Broughton earned his second first-place victory in the 500-yard freestyle, as the Highlanders again placed two on the podium with Turner Englehart swimming his way to a fourth-place finish in the event.
Hoover earned his first-place finish in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 55.97, beating his closest competitor by more than a second.
Wei then put Hazen back at the top of the podium in the meet’s final individual event, the 100-yard breaststroke, posting a 1:01.82 for a win of more than a second.
Finally, the 400-freestyle relay team of Broughton, Hoover, Wei and Licea-Montes finished a close second behind Kennedy to secure the overall meet win.
A total of 10 Hazen swimmers will be moving on to the state meet this weekend in Federal Way.
