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High school senior Anelise Hedges has announced her commitment to the University of Utah. She is expected to begin competition for the Utes in the fall of 2021.
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Hedges has raced at the Colorado High School State Championship meet in each of her 3 high school seasons so far, representing Arvada West High School.
As a freshman, in Class 5A, where the state’s biggest schools reside, she missed her best times, and scoring, in both the 100 breast and 200 IM.
But as a sophomore, after Arvada West was reclassified as a 4A school for girls’ swimming, she dropped huge time and moved quickly up the state rankings.
Progressions at Colorado HS State Meets:
| 2018 – FR | 2019 – SO | 2020 – JR | |
| 100 breast | 1:09.55 – 20th | 2:07.51 – 4th | 2:05.40 – 2nd |
| 200 IM | 2:14.18 – 21st | 1:05.38 – 6th | 1:04.57 – 5th |
Hedges’ two best events, the 200 breaststroke and 400 IM, aren’t on the high school calendar. In both races, along with the 100 breast, she swam best times in early March across the country at the Potomac Valley SC Senior Championships shortly before coronavirus quarantines began closing down meets.
Best Times in Yards:
- 100 breast – 1:03.77
- 200 breast – 2:15.37
- 200 IM – 2:04.68
- 400 IM – 4:23.27
Those events have shown a similar rapid improvement throughout her high school career. As an 8th-grader, her best time was 2:31.7 in the 200 breast, for example. That dropped by 10 seconds to 2:21.8 as a freshman, another few tenths as a sophomore to 2:21.0, and saw another huge lurch forward in the spring with an almost 5-second drop to 2:15.3.
In the 400 IM, she dropped almost 9 seconds as a junior from 4:31.0 to 4:23.2.
Utah, which finished 7th out o 8 teams at last year’s Pac-12 Championships, had a decent breaststroke group and a really strong IM group last season. Hedges’ lineup lays out very similarly to Utah’s top-scoring swimmer from last year’s Pac-12 Championship meet, then-freshman Charity Pittard.
Pittard finished 14th in the 200 IM, 8th in the 400 IM, and 11th in the 200 breast at the Pac-12 Championship meet. She progressed especially well in the 400 IM, dropping 2 seconds from her personal best as a freshman at Utah.
Hedges trains year-round with the Jeffco Hurricanes in Colorado.
She joins a Utah class of 2021 that includes Sydney Rogness, Haily Payne, Maile Andresen, Norah Hay, and Milla Ruthven. Ruthven, like Hedges, is from Colorado. They’ll join two other Colorado natives, Harper Lehman and Audrey Reimer, on the Utes’ roster in the 2021-2022 season.
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