WIAA State 2A/1A Boys Swim: Bainbridge denies Pullman a 3-peat; Big Performances and Big Times

2/22/2025

(Federal Way, WA) The 2A/1A State Boys Swim and Dive Championships were held this last week at the King County Aquatic Center in Federal Way. Pullman was back to defend their title after winning it the past 2 straight years. The Greyhounds had been knocking on the door for several years before pulling off back-to-back wins, their first 2 in school history.

They would have a new nemisis in the Bainbridge Spartans who dropped from 3a to 2A in the last reclassification. This set up quite the dual. Our coverage below includes our meet re-caps, listing of AAA and AAC times, each event results and video replay, photo gallery and more, just keep scrolling!

Bainbridge spoils the Greyhound 3-Peat

The 2A two-time defending team Champions, Pullman were back to take aim at their 3rd in a row but they would have to take on 2A/1A newcomer and swim powerhouse Bainbridge. The Spartans have been one of those teams you had to contend with for years at the 3A level. But Bainbridge dropped to the 2A classification this last year. Anacortes and Olympic are also recent team Champs along with Snohomish. But Snohomish went the other way in re-classification and are now 3A.

Below is our coverage including some highlights from day 1 the preliminary round. Also included final team standings, results of each event, video highlights and a photo gallery.

The team Championship race was down to 2 teams after the first event with Bainbridge winning the opening 200 Medley relay and Pullman taking 2nd. The relay team of Sota Inoue, Ryan Rich, Ian Letson and Bradley Roloff held off the Greyhounds by less than a second. Inoue set the table in the first leg setting a 24.49 split that Pullman could not overcome.

Pullman answered with two straight wins in the 200 Freestyle and 4th place and then winning the 200 IM. Bainbridge did place 2nd in both races and added 3rd and 4th in the IM. After 3 events Pullman led 116-111.

Bainbridge would re-take the team lead after the 50 Free placing 1st and 2nd while Pullman countered with 5th and 9th and the Spartans pushed their lead to 148-139. The Spartans then began to edge away with another 1-2 finish in the Butterfly and 1st and 3rd in the 100 Free for 233-180.5 lead.

Pullman would win the 500 Free and take 7th with Bainbridge taking 2nd. After the 500 Bainbridge led 259-215.5 and that is as close as they would get. The Greyhounds would go on to score an impressive 336 team points but the Spartans topped the standings with 395.

Bainbridge Island swept all 3 relays and won a total of 8 of the 11 events. Pullman won the other 3 so only a Spartan or Greyhound won any individual events except for Diving which went to Kaden Scmidt of Sehome.

Let’s take a deeper dive into this 2 team domination. Bainbridge would finish with 8 wins, 5 2nds and 4 3rd-8th finishes and 5 9th-16th placings. This is 67% of the wins, 18% of all top 8 placings and 11% of the top 16 placings. Pullman won 3, placed 2nd 3 times and finished 3rd-8th 10 times while placing 9th-16th 8 times. This is 25% of the wins, 16% of the top 8 and 12% of the top 16.

Combined they won 92% of the events, took 33% of the top 8 placings and 23% of the top 16. There were a total of 96 top 8 placings and 192 top 16. This is domination.

Now there was a great battle for the other 2 trophies. Only 4 team trophies were awarded. Steilacoom took over 3rd place after the final diving results came into play officially as the 5th event. The Sentinels placed 8th, 9th and 14th picking up 23 points to surge past Selah and Fife. Steilacoom would never surrender 3rd place but had to fight hard to hold on winning 3rd place by a single point.

Olympic held 3rd early on but then fell back as far as 6th place. The Trojans would press themselves into 5th place trailing Anacortes going into the 11th event, the Breaststroke. Olympic’s Adam Sawyer finshed 3rd picking up 16 big points moving them past the Seahawks into 4th place and trailed Steilacoom 137-116.

The Trojans then nearly stole 3rd place from the Sentinels when they ripped off 4 seconds on their 400 Free relay prelim time to take 3rd place and pick up 32 huge points. This meant Steilacoom could finish no worse than 11th place to hold onto 3rd place and that’s where they finished in 11th taking 12 points to finish with 149 to Olympics 148. Anacortes wasn’t far back either with 140 after taking 4th in the final event.

2A Final Team Standings

  1. Bainbridge Island                 395   2. Pullman                           336
  3. Steilacoom                        149   4. Olympic                           148
  5. Anacortes                         140   6. Port Angeles                    120.5
  7. Selah                             114   8. Fife                              110
  9. South Whidbey                      97  10. Squalicum                          74
 11. East Valley (Yakima)             68.5  12. Ridgefield                         58
 13. Aberdeen                           56  14. Prosser                            54
 14. Renton                             54  14. Sehome                             54
 17. Hockinson                          53  18. Seton Catholic                     42
 18. Kingston                           42  20. Bellingham                         37
 21. Archbishop Murphy                  33  22. Nathan Hale                        28
 23. Lindbergh                          21  24. North Kitsap                       17
 25. Mark Morris                        12  26. Klahowya                            6
 27. Coupeville                          4  28. Bremerton                           2

Top 2 teams dominate the day

Bainbridge Island’s and Pullman’s huge swim teams simply overwhelmed the competition. The Spartans swept all 3 relay’s with Sota Inoue, Ryan Rich, Ian Letson and Bradley Roloff taking the 200 medley. Aidan Cole, Roloff, Hayden Ludwig and Elias Dean won the 200 Free and taking the 400 Free was yet another line-up of Dean, Letson, Inoue and Cole. Pullman would take 2nd in the 200 Medley and 400 Free and 3rd in the 200 Free with Selah taking 2nd.

Pullman’s 3 wins were by Nolan Pollestad improving on his preliminary time in the 200 Freestyle by 7/10ths of a seconds finishing in a time of 1:46.94. Jake McCoy then set a meet record in the 200 IM blasting a 1:47.79 final time. More than 12 seconds in front of the 2nd place finisher and lone sub 2:00 time in the finals. McCoy missed the State record by just .19 seconds. The was an AAA time. If Mccoy had set the state record he would have lost it to Capital’s Andrew Coombs in the 3A meet who fired a 1:46.83 and then he lost it to Syunta Lee a Freshman from Jackson who went 1:46.66. The 200 Im State record was nearly broken 3 times in one day.

McCoy would finish his amazing day with another big effort in the 500 free just missing the meet record in a fast time of 4:29.07 missing the 4:27.66 meet record. McCoy shaved 11 seconds off his preliminary time and picked up his 2nd AAA time of the day.

Bainbridge’s Aidan Cole was a double individual winner. Cole out-touched his teammate Elias Dean in a time of 21.18 to 21.68. Cole then won the 100 Free in a final time of 46.50 winning by nearly 2 seconds. Dean almost doubled with him again but took 3rd losing to Jack Hemphill of South Whidbey by 1/100th of a second 48.14 to 48.15.

Sota Inoue won the Butterfly and teammate Ian Letson took 2nd by 5/100ths of a 2nd, Freshman Leland Hilgers from Bainbridge won the Backstroke by a full second over Tavyn Shelton from Olympic. And Rich Ryan got a gold medal in the Breaststroke peeling off more than a second from his prelim time with a 58.27.

Day 1 Preliminary Highlights

In day 1 of the 2A/1A there were some blazing times that qualified for the All-America consideration (AAC) times but no one recorded an automatic All-America (AAA) time.

The 1st AAC time came in the 200 IM. Senior Jake McCoy of Pullman fired off a big shot serving notice he is the one to beat in the finals when he stopped the clock in a time of 1:50.79. This time was actually 7/10ths of second slower than his qualifying time of 1:50.06. McCoy won this event last year in 1:50.05 so don’t be surpriszed if he hangs a 1:49 time on Saturday. He also owns the 1st and 3rd fastest 200 IM times in meet history. His time on Friday will add his name to the list a 3rd time.

Bainbridge teammates Aidan Cole and Elias Dean were the top 2 qualifiers in the 50 Free with Cole at 21.41 and Dean at 22.07. Both shaved time off their qualifying numbers with Cole at 21.18 and Dean getting under 22 seconds at 21.91. Dean placed 4th in this event last year in the 3A meet. Bainbridge dropped from 3A to 2A this last summer during the rfe-classification. Cole and Dean also finished 1-2 in the 100 Freestyle with Cole just missing an AAC time.

This was a pre-cursor to a big day by the Spartans as they racked up wins in the 200 Medley Relay, 1st and 2nd in the 100 Butterfly with Sota Inoue winning and Ian Letson, the 200 Free Relay, Mathias Bang-Knudsen won the Backstroke, Rich Ryan took the Breaststroke and they racked up the finale with a win in the 400 Freestyle Relay.

All-America Automatic Times

Saturday
Jake McCoy Sr Pullman 200 IM 1:47.79 *Meet Record
Jake McCoy Sr Pullman 500 Freestyle 4:29.07

All-America Consideration Times

Friday
Jake McCoy Sr Pullman 200 IM 1:50.79

Special Awards

Each meet gave out several special awards including the Academic State team Champions, Swimmer of the Meet, Coach of the year and they honored 1 official for their time and commitment. Here are the 2A/1A awards.

Official of the Year
James Tubberville

2A Academic State Champions
Fife Trojans

1A Academic State Champions
Seton Catholic Cougars

2A/1A Coach of the Year
Mark Van Huis-Kingston

2A/1A Swimmer of the Meet
Jake McCoy-Pullman

Adaptive Competition

The 2A/1A Adaptive competition was again one of the many highlights at the 2A/1A swim meet. 6 atletes competed in both events of the 50 Freestyle and 50 Backstroke.

In the first race the 50 Free, Gordon Cannon from a senior from Fife pulled away in the final strokes to win with a fast time of 30.28. Cannon broke his own meet record of 33.02 from last year. Cannon held off Anacortes’ junior Matthew Lucas who was right behind with a nice time of 31.08. AJ Kim a junior from Lindbergh was all alone in 3rd with a 35.71. Then came senior Charles Johnson from Hudson’s Bay in 4th, Andre Manguro just a freshman from Nathan Hale was 5th and Kai Borton a junior from Sehome finished 6th.

In the 50 Backstroke, Matthew Lucas sailed through the water breaking the meet record of 43.69 by 7 seconds with a new record time of 36.55. Lucas almost beat Gordon Cannon in the free but in the backstroke held off Cannon who took 2nd place and was the former holder of the meet record. Cannon broke his old time with a 42.64 for the 2nd fastest backstroke in meet history. AJ Kim was a close 3rd with a time of 44.18. Charles Johnson fnished 4th followed by Andre Manguro and Kai Borton.

These 6 swimmers showed great school spirit, determination and reminded everyone of why sports and activities are so important in the schools. They were all great representatives of their schools and all were awarded medals for their efforts. In an editorial comment here, this is truly one of our favorite events to cover each and every year. It is the epitome of high school sports. Congratulations to all 6 athletes.

Full videos of both races just below.

Adaptive 50-yard Freestyle