In this weekend’s Washington Metropolitan Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championships (Metros), the Whitman swim and dive team had a great performance. Both the boys and the girls’ teams swam and dove well, with the boys finishing third out of 33 teams and the girls sixth out of 34.

The boys’ third-place finish was the best finish for the Vikes at Metros since 1975. They were the top finishing public school, and after scoring 368 points, they were only behind Gonzaga and Georgetown Prep in the standings. 

A majority of the boys’ points came from the 200-yard medley, 200-yard freestyle and 400-yard freestyle relays, where they finished third in each. The Vikes now hold the MCPS records in both the 200-yard medley and the 400-yard free relays; the 200-yard medley qualified them for All-American status and the freestyle relays both qualified for All-American consideration. 

Although no Viking swimmer finished first in a race, junior Alec Cooper came very close, finishing less than one second out of first place in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 45.94 seconds. Cooper also had a third-place finish in the 50-yard freestyle, swimming the race in 21.28 seconds. 

“It was a really good meet for us, but despite our success at Metros, winning states is what’s on my mind,” Cooper said.

Junior Jason Bretz also had a strong day, helping two of the relay teams (200-yard medley and 400-yard freestyle) and placing fourth in the 100-yard backstroke at 49.81 seconds.

The girls also had a great day of swimming, finishing in sixth place with 177.5 points. They were the third-best public school at the meet, yet nobody could catch up to the high powered team of Stone Ridge, who won the championship. 

Nobody on the team finished in the top five in a race, but sophomore Lily Hsu finished eighth in the 1-meter diving. Also, the team had two top 10 relay finishes. A team of sophomore Giulia Baroldi, freshman Elena Harrison, senior Ally Navarrete and junior Susan Rodgers placed eighth in the 200-yard freestyle relay at 1:39.24; Navarrete, Baroldi, sophomore Victoria Svensson and freshman Zoya Memon finished seventh in the 400-yard freestyle relay in a time of 3:37.22. 

Memon had a stand-out individual performance in the 500-yard freestyle. She dropped nearly 4 seconds between the preliminary and finals sessions, moving from seventeenth to eleventh place to win the B-final in a time of 5:06.10.

Lastly, Svensson placed eighth in the 100-yard backstroke in a time of 58.47 seconds. The stand out swim of the meet, however, came from lane 5 of Svensson’s 100 backstroke heat: Stone Ridge senior Phoebe Bacon set the National High School record with a time of 50.89, becoming the first high school girl ever to swim the event in under 51 seconds.

The Vikings’ next meet is the Maryland 4A3A West Regional Championships on Saturday. The meet starts at 8 a.m. at the MLK Swim Center.

Ally Navarrete is an Online Managing Editor for The Black & White.