Heading into the district finals this weekend, several members of the Oak Harbor High School swim team are on the cusp of qualify for the state finals.
The top four finishers at the 3A District championship meet earn state berths. The finals are 4 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 13, at the Snohomish Aquatic Center.
The state meet is Friday and Saturday, Feb. 19 and 20, at the Weyerhaeuser King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way.
Eleven Wildcats have qualified for district, and Oak Harbor will have at least one athlete in every event. Several are seeded near the fourth-place cutoff mark.
Senior Joe Gorman heads into district with the third-best times in the 200 and 500 freestyles and is one of Oak Harbor’s best bets to earn a state slot.
Gorman competed in an individual event at state as a sophomore but missed qualifying last year by one place.
“It’s a goal of mine to go in both the 200 and 500,” Gorman said.
Having a smaller squad this season, about half the size of last year’s 30-man team, hasn’t hindered the Wildcats’ quest to qualify for the postseason, according to Gorman.
Less bodies could have weakened the in-practice competition and the team’s morale, but that wasn’t the case, Gorman said.
“It made it really hard to win meets, but it also made us a much tighter-knit group,” he added.
Coach Erin Bull said she is “proud of the group that is going to district.”
Joining Gorman are Eric Jensen (50 free, 100 butterfly), Logan Clark (50 free, 100 free), Jose Cabigting (200 individual medley, 100 breaststroke), Cole McCaslin (200 free, 500 free), Andrew Snyder (200 IM, 100 fly), Garrett Karney (100 backstroke), Matthew Kolden (100 back) and
Jared Hunt (200 free).
All three relays also qualified: 200 free (Clark, Jensen, Snyder, Gorman); 200 medley (Gorman, Cabigting, Jensen, Clark); and 400 free (Garrett Karney, Quinn Karney, Snyder, McCaslin).
Gorman, Jensen, the 200 medley relay and the 200 free relay are the strongest candidates to earn state berths, Bull said.
Gorman and Jensen swam on the 200 free relay team that finished 24th at the state meet last year.
The district preliminaries begin at 5 p.m. Friday, Feb. 12.
