Moses Lake swimmers qualify three individuals and a relay for state meet

MOSES LAKE — In a game where tenths of a second make all the difference in the world, it still sounds funny when swimmers say, “breathing slows you down.” But whatever works.

The Moses Lake boys swim team kept pace with Wenatchee, winning almost every race Thursday afternoon in its double-dual with Eisenhower (145-36) and Davis (142-33).

The Chiefs (3-0) were expected to beat two teams on the bottom of the Columbia Basin Big Nine Conference, but where the fun part came was in the sprints and the 400-yard relay where the Chiefs qualified three individuals and the relay for the Class 4A state meet.

Kyle Jorgensen and Ander Molitor qualified with two impressive swims in the 50 freestyle, both dipping under the qualifying time of 22.50 seconds. Molitor, who just crushed the field on the opening leg of the 400 relay (48.94), also qualified for the state race in the 100-yard freestyle; Molitor got under the standard of 49.40. “Now the work begins,” Moses Lake coach Tony St. Onge.

Nobody’s going to be resting on their laurels in the Chiefs’ camp. St. Onge likes to work them straight through the holidays.

Jorgensen won the 50 freestyle with a time of 22.37 and Molitor was right on his shoulder two lanes away, finishing second in 22.43. Deep Purple would have been proud, because it truly was “Smoke on the Water.”

“I’ve practiced it so many times, it’s just muscle memory. If you want to go fast you just don’t breath. Breathing slows you down,” said Jorgensen, who likes that 50-yard sprint more than any race in the pool. “The thing about the 50 is that you can’t mess anything up. Every little thing you do matters.

“To drop even a fraction of a second, you have to fix 10 things. Once you get off the blocks, it’s just pull as hard as you can to the other end, flip and do it again.”

Molitor was happy with his swims.

“It’s always nice to have state times locked in so you don’t have to worry about districts,” he said. “In the 50 today, you’re pretty nervous on the blocks, but once the beeper goes off it’s going flat out the whole time.

“A lot of people go quite a ways underwater (off the start), but my coach says I’m faster on the top of the water, so I try to come up as fast as I can off the blocks. The turn is the most important part of the 50, that’s something we practice all the time and something you have to keep in mind during the race.”

The 400 relay was shooting to meet the qualifying standard at this particular meet to get it out of the way early on in the season. Molitor (48.96), Eric Kemper (52.24), Jorgensen (49.72) and Heaps (50.89) were almost a full minute ahead of Moses Lake II, which finished second in 4:22.61. Jackson Fair, Jonathan Phillips, Adam Owensby and Jordan Pack were on that one.

Heaps was a couple of seconds away from the state standard in the 500 freestyle. He won in 5:03.83, but needed 4:58.025 to earn a trip to the big meet. He’s close and certainly nothing he can’t tweak for the next time.

“I feel like I’m on pace. Once I’m rested, I’ll be able to get it,” he said. “I swam this today with only a day of rest. It helps to have someone to race. At the next couple of meets, I’ll have someone that can go the same pace as me, and I expect to go faster.”

Moses Lake’s Isaiah Zeller closed in on a school record in the 1-meter diving, blowing away the field with a score of 212.95 to win.