Maize swimming dominates once again at Northwest Invite

One of the coaches summed it up after the Northwest High School Boys’ Invitational swim meet when he said his team would be having a pretty good season if it wasn’t for Maize High School.  

It’s because when Maize is at the meet, it’s more of a battle for second in the team points and the individual events, unless Wichita East also happens to be there.   That proved to be the case on January 28th where Maize won the team title with 412 points, while the Derby High school finished second with 274 points.

Click Here for complete meet results.

Maize won all the individual events except for one.  The Eagles did the same thing in the relays, winning two of the three.  

It’s the core foursome of Christopher Clemmons, Gavin Olson, Lucas Popp, and Mitchell Wagner who combined for seven individual golds and two relay first place finishes resulting in more than half of the team’s total points.

Olson won the 200-yard freestyle (1:50.06) and the 100-yard butterfly (53.52).  Popp picked up his two golds in the 50-yard freestyle ( 21.71)  and the 100-yard freestyle (47.53).  Wagner won the 200-yard individual medley in a time of 2:02:70 and the 100-yard backstroke (53.48).  Clemons picked up his first in the 100-yard breaststroke in 1:04.98. 

Those four swept the freestyle relays with a time of 1:29.22 in the 200-yard freestyle relay and 3:17.18 in the 400-yard freestyle relay.

Maize Coach Hussein Yassine says the focus is really on league and state right now, but he felt good about the performances of his team today.

“We’re a little ahead of the curve right now.  We had some unexpected times today and that’s good,” said Yassine.

It was the Derby High School medley relay and a lone swimmer from Newton who spoiled the Maize sweep.  Derby won the 200-yard medley relay in a time of 1:44.81. The team was made up of Erik Russell, Bryce Hill, Carl Mayou and Jackson Sandstrom. 

Newton’s Cameron Spreier took gold in the 500-yard freestyle in a time of 5:08.44.

Wichita East competed in Emporia today.  Many of the area teams will be travelling to Kansas State Saturday to compete at the Manhattan Invitational, which is the last regular season meet before league championships.  The state swim meet will be February 17th and 18th in Topeka.