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Disclaimer: Swim of the Week is not meant to be a conclusive selection of the best overall swim of the week, but rather one Featured Swim to be explored in deeper detail. The Swim of the Week is an opportunity to take a closer look at the context of one of the many fast swims this week, perhaps a swim that slipped through the cracks as others grabbed the headlines, or a race we didn’t get to examine as closely in the flood of weekly meets.
We only have to go back five years to find a time when the fastest high school junior in the country in the boys’ 200 butterfly had a time of 1:45.
Swimmers have gotten exceedingly quicker in the event in recent years, with names such as Luca Urlando (1:40.91) and Aiden Hayes (1:41.34) putting up incredibly fast times in their junior years, but still, boys in the 16-17 age range don’t go 1:45 all that often. But last week at the NCSA Spring Championships six of them did it in the same heat.
Rockville Montgomery’s Adriano Arioti, 16, led the way in 1:43.40, dropping over a second off his previous best time of 1:44.72. He was followed by fellow high school juniors Kyle Peck, Logan Robinson, Matt Marsteiner, Diego Balbi and Rian Graham, all of whom went 1:45-point and set personal best times.
Another junior, Poseidon Swimming’s Joshua Fisher, was just shy of cracking the 1:46 barrier in 1:46-flat.
2023 NCSA Spring Championship Final
- Adriano Arioti (Rockville Montgomery) – 1:43.40
- Kyle Peck (Stingrays Swim Team) – 1:45.11
- Logan Robinson (Greater Pensacola) – 1:45.20
- Matt Marsteiner (New Wave) – 1:45.29
- Diego Balbi (Saint Andrew’s Aquatics) – 1:45.36
- Toby Barnett (Rockville Montgomery) – 1:45.85*
- Rian Graham (Machine Aquatics) – 1:45.96
- Joshua Fisher (Poseidon Swimming) – 1:46.00
*HS senior
RACE VIDEO
These performances only bolster the boys’ high school class of 2024’s strength in the 200 fly, which also includes the likes of Cooper Lucas (1:43.44), Drew Hitchcock (1:43.26), Dean Jones (1:46.96) and Chase Swearingen (1:47.92).
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