2021 Alaska High School State Swimming Championships Results
- November 5-6, 2021
- Bartlett High School, Anchorage, Alaska
- Short Course Yards (25 yards)
- Individual event prelims/all event finals (top 8 only)
- Prelims Results
- Finals Results
Tokyo 2020 Olympic gold medalist Lydia Jacoby lit up the Bartlett High School Natatorium last weekend in her final Alaska High School State Championship meet.
Girls’ top 6 teams:
- Dimond High – 98
- West Valley High – 70
- Colony High – 52
- Eagle River High – 49
- (TIE) Juneau Douglas High/Homer High – 43
A clearly-unrested Jacoby won the 100 yard breaststroke in 59.66 and the 200 yard IM in 2:05.70. Her time in the 100 breaststroke is a new Alaska State Record, and she now has the six best times in State Championship meet history. Her 200 IM swim makes her the second-fastest swimmer in state meet history, behind record holder Tahna Lindquist.
After last year’s official ASAA state championship meet was canceled, Jacoby finishes her career with 5 individual state titles in 6 swims. The only blemish came as a sophomore in 2019, where she placed 3rd in the 200 IM.
She was one of four swimmers from her high school to compete at the meet, and one of only two to make the finals. Along with Mia Nappi, who was 6th in the 100 fly and 7th in the 100 breast, Seward’s girls finished in 9th place at the meet.
But even an Olympic gold medalist wasn’t enough to hold off the Dimond High School girls, who won their 6th-straight girls’ state title.
While Dimond didn’t win any individual events on Saturday, they used a deep roster to sweep the day’s three double-points relays. In the 200 medley, they won in 1:48.37, ahead of Colony’s 1:49.02; in the 200 free relay, they won in 1:36.91 ahead of Eagle River’s 1:38.63; and in the 400 free relay, they won in 3:36.51, ahead of West Valley High’s 3:37.59. The 200 free relay missed the state record by less than three tenths of a second.
Jacoby wasn’t the only Olympian competing in Saturday’s girls’ meet: Jillian Crooks, who was a flag-bearer for the Cayman Islands in Tokyo, won big in her first Alaska State Championship meet.
The 15-year old Crooks was Cayman Islands’ youngest-ever Olympian over the summer, and now the Homer High School freshman is making her mark on the state history books as well.
In her first race, the 200 free, Crooks swam a new best time of 1:49.85. That broke the state record of 1:50.02 set by East Anchorage’s Meghan Cavanaugh in 2007.
Later, Crooks won her 2nd state title in the 100 free with a 50.70, which makes her the second-fastest swimmer in state championship history (Ila Hughes was 50.51 in 2014 and 50.62 in 2012).
She also split 23.37 on the leadoff leg of Homer High School’s 200 free relay. Her teammate Carly Nelson was 3rd in the individual free in 53.05 as part of a fast 1-2 sprint punch for Homer.
The defending state champion in that 100 free, Dimond’s Dreamer Kowatch, opted to swim the 200 free (2nd) and 100 fly (4th) this season instead.
Other Girls’ Winners:
- Eagle River’s Anna Keen won the 50 free in 23.61. That sliced .04 seconds off her time from her conference meet a week earlier. The 14-year old also swam a best time of 1:04.70 in the 100 breaststroke for 4th place in her freshman championship meet.
- Hutchison High School junior Grace Greene won the girls’ 1-meter diving with a score of 373.10. She was 4th at the last state championship meet in 2019.
- Lathrop sophomore Avery Hafele won a pair of races in her first high school state championship. First she topped the 100 fly in 55.70, and later she won the 100 back in 58.04. Both swims are new lifetime bests, and the 100 fly missed another Meghan Cavanaugh State Record by just .11 seconds.
- West Valley High got their lone win of the meet in the 500 free, where junior Samantha Bristor won wire-to-wire in 5:12.35.
Boys’ Top 5 Teams:
- Kodiak High School – 79
- Dimond High – 71
- Eagle River – 69
- Juneau Douglas High – 62
- Service High – 60
Two years removed from the last state championship meet, the boys of Kodiak High School surged up the state rankings. After placing 7th in 2019, the Kodiak boys won their second state championship in program history on Saturday.
Kodiak opened their title run with a 1:35.67 in the 200 medley that is the second-best time in state history. That relay included a 23.48 backstroke leg from Ian Rocheleau and a 23.63 fly leg from Jackson Krug, both of which were foreshadowing of victories to come.
Later in the meet, Rocheleau won the 100 back in 51.16, more than two seconds faster than runner-up Wesley Mank, a freshman from Craig High School.
Krug, meanwhile, didn’t swim the 100 fly individually, but he did swim the 100 free, where he grabbed a win in 46.64.
The meet was still mathematically within reach for Dimond High headed into the final relay just 6 points behind Kodiak, but Kodiak and Juneau tied for the win in 1:15.32, with Dimond 3rd, clinching the state title for the Bears. A Krug 45.73 anchor ran down Juneau Douglas’ Tytan Fawley in that race to share gold.
The other relay, the 200 free relay, was won by Eagle River High in 1:27.92. Dimond River was 2nd there, about three-tenths back, and Kodiak High was about 6th. That was Dimond’s best opportunity in the meet to make up serious points on a Kodiak High team that didn’t quite have three relay depth, but ultimately they couldn’t do enough.
The lone individual double winner of the day was Thunder Mountain’s Patrick Foy. Just a sophomore, racing in his first high school state championship, Foy won the 200 IM in 1:50.55. That put him a whopping four seconds ahead of one of the other stars of the meet, Rocheleau, and left him half-a-second short of the state record. His best time coming into the meet was a 1:53.7 from Sectionals in April. This event is a new revelation for him – prior to December 2020, his best was just a 2:22.90, then he went 2:15 in December, 1:58 in February, and has dropped his time regularly since then leading into his victory on Saturday.
His other win came in the 100 breaststroke in 55.45. That too was a new personal best, clearing his regionals time of 56.60. On a similar timeline as the 200 IM, he’s gone from 1:01.0 to 55.4 in that event.
His swim crushed the old state record of 56.40 that was set by Soldotna’s Joshua Gemmell in 2000. That was the oldest boys state record on the books by eight years.
Other Event Winners:
- Juneau Douglas’ Tytan Frawley won the boys’ 200 free in 1:43.42, ahead of Krug. He later finished 2nd in the 500 free in 4:45.36.
- Service High freshman Conrad Fawcett won the 500 free in 4:41.59. Service High, the defending champions, graduated a veteran group from their title-winning 2019 team, but Fawcett is the head of a young rebuilding program.
- Dimond High’s Andrew Billings topped the 50 free in 21.55. This meet marked the first time that the uncommitted junior broke 22 seconds in the race. Prior to this fall season, his best time was a 23.03 at the 2019 state championship when he was a freshman.
- Juneau Douglas junior Chaz VanSlyke won the 100 fly in 52.17, which is a new personal best for him.
- Wasilla High School’s entire representation at the state meet was via its divers, and they scored big. On the girls’ side, they were led by a 3rd-place finish from Audrey Dietz that saw them pick up 3rd and 8th place points. The boys had four of the top six finishers, led by Kade Reynolds with a whopping 508.25. Wasilla is the historic state power in diving – Reynolds’ win is the 7th diving state title by the program since 2014. The diving program is a co-op led by Wendi DiGerlando, who also coaches Colony High’s diving team – which had a female and male state finalist as well.
It’s spelled Soldotna. It’s about time someone broke my record.
SwimSwam is incredible with all of the data and facts, but I’m curious if there’s a way to tell which states have rules around club vs high school and how they play out. I know in some states, the majority of the top swimmers don’t swim high school because they wouldn’t be able to attend their club practice, while with others, it doesn’t seem to be a distinction between club and high school at all. I believe I heard one of the Carmel swimmers comment that he wasn’t sure who was only a high school swimmer, as there’s no difference in their schedules. Even harder still, just because a rule is on the books doesn’t mean it’s actually enforced in… Read more »
This could vary by state but I know in my own experience this was decided by the coaches themselves, there weren’t necessary any official rules for or against it. Some high school coaches required everyone to attend the high school practices so a lot of club swimmers at those schools I knew would opt out of the high school season, whereas other hs coaches didn’t care as long as you showed up to the meets (and those distinctions could be seen between 2 public schools just down from the road from each other).
Some states have rules about it, some leagues have rules about it. Some leave it up to schools/coaches.
My rule for club swimmers was always something like “you need to come to X of our practices to be part of the team. We will execute whatever practice your club coaches want you to be doing on that day, but you need to be present.”
Worked out well. We had short HS workouts so did a lot of “speed” stuff, so the club kids got to use it as some speed/power training from programs that were still a lot of high volume work. Usually the rule was something modest, like 2 days/week. The extra 3 hours of training wasn’t going to… Read more »
Wow, we only had to do one hs practice per week. Rules pretty much set by the club coaches. “Allow them to come only once per week or you’ll lose League championships without them”. Another fun rule: if we didn’t join club practice immediately AFTER hs practice… well, we’d no longer be club swimmers.
As a club swimmer, I liked this (didnt want to mess up my training by going to the “slow” hs practices). It also allowed the hs team to have beginner swimmers who could develop their skills and not burn out. We also did peer coaching, and the hs swimmers seemed to enjoy it.
As a club swimmer, I became captain of my hs swim team. Didnt… Read more »
My high school swam 8 times per week including 2 doubles. Without this website and college, I would have assumed that was normal. Oops.
New swimmers either got better fast or quit less than halfway through their first season.
I swam club and high school in Indiana. Generally, in my experience you are supposed to practice with your high school, but out of season everyone swims club, and the club teams have really tight associations with the high schools. Also high schools in Indiana usually have their own pools so they get first dibs on pool time. My high team swam almost 14 hours a week and did 2 hours of weight lifting. Carmel high school and Carmel swim club’s senior group are probably almost the same thing. That’s often, not always, the way it is in Indiana. Same coaches, same pool, same swimmers, same schedule.
Competing club during high school season during club is more complicated. If you… Read more »
Queen of the North!
swim meets? in Alaska??
Imagine the work it takes to break all of the ice off the pool first.
Really jumping into a cold pool.
Lydia went so fast because she was actually ice skating.
while being chased by grizzly bears
Do some states have swimming as a fall sport? I’m curious as to why states are being held in November
A lot do it in December, some do February
Illinois has girls swimming in the fall and boys in the winter.
Same thing for CT
and massachusetts
Actually Massachusetts still hasn’t corrected their issue. SOME of the schools swim in the Fall and MOST swim in the winter – for both girls and boys. There may only be 2 -5 boys in a single event in the Fall. It’s a mess, and very confusing.
Minnesota for Girls has always been fall and the meet lands around the 2nd weekend of November, Boys season starts right around Thanksgiving and their State meet is usually first week of March
South Carolina & Florida are in the fall because a lot of schools use outdoor pools.
IL splits boys and girls because of pool access