Mustangs make waves: Redmond wins 200 medley relay at Kingco meet

The Redmond girls swim team shined at Saturday’s 4A Kingco Championships, held at Mary Wayte Pool in Mercer Island.

November 3, 2008 3:56 pm
Redmond’s Heather Harper placed second in the 100-yard freestyle at Saturday’s 4A Kingco Championships. She also swam the second leg on the Mustangs’ winning 200 medley relay.
Redmond’s Heather Harper placed second in the 100-yard freestyle at Saturday’s 4A Kingco Championships. She also swam the second leg on the Mustangs’ winning 200 medley relay.

The Redmond girls swim team shined at Saturday’s 4A Kingco Championships, held at Mary Wayte Pool in Mercer Island.

The Mustangs finished seventh in the 3A/4A combined competition with 299.5 points, but had a number of strong individual and relay performances.

Mercer Island won the meet with 566 points.

In the 200-yard medley relay, Redmond’s “A” squad of Becca Wyant, Heather Harper, Maureen Cardwell and Melodie Nagasawa teamed up for a winning time of 1 minute, 51.16 seconds, almost six seconds better than their preliminary time.

The same four girls placed fifth in the 200 freestyle relay with a time of 1:43.87.

Wyant won the “B” heat of the 200 individual medley, with a time 2:14.66, the fifth-best time overall, and she also placed fourth in the “A” heat of the 50 freestyle event with a time of 25.20.

Cardwell, the defending state 50 free and 100 butterfly champion, won the “B” heat of the 50 freestyle in 25.03, the fourth-best time. In addition, Cardwell broke one minute in the 100 butterfly, crushing the “B” heat competitors with a lightning-quick 59.98, bested only by Ballard’s Annemarie Thayer (56.66) and Rachel Godfred (58.41) of Mercer Island.

“We swam a lot better on Saturday than on Thursday (during the preliminaries),” said Redmond head swim coach Julie Barashkoff.

Harper nearly won the 100 free with a time of 55.61, but settled for second, after nabbing the final spot in the “A” heat with a 56.63 in Thursday’s prelims at Juanita High. Harper also clocked a state-qualifying time of 25.53 in the 50 free.

“Heather Harper swam the 50 free and 100 free, both her ‘off’ events,” Barashkoff said. “She just wanted to try something else and she did really well. She was pleased with that.”

Next up for the Mustangs is the two-day Sea-King District II Championship meet at Juanita High School. The prelims are Friday with the finals on Saturday. Action starts at 5:30 p.m. both days.

“I just hope that we can continue to get best times for our best events,” said Barashkoff on her team’s goals for the district competition. “Our medley relay should do really well. Garfield will be their top competition. We just gotta come up on Friday and swim well, come back and do even better on Saturday.”