Adrian adds accolades

Just call the Knights’ Nathan Adrian an All-American.

Adrian posted a pair of All-American qualifying times Saturday in the West Central District meet at Foss High School in Tacoma to add to his lengthy list of accomplishments this season. The senior recorded a time of 1:41.23 in the 200-yard freestyle, which broke a 19-year old meet record, and added a 100 freestyle time of 46.32 seconds. Adrian has been a member of the U.S. junior national team and will swim for the University of California next fall.

The prolific swimmer won two state titles as a freshman, the last time he competed for his high school team, and also qualified for state in each individual event this season.

The best year in Bremerton boys swimming history has been good, thanks in large part to Adrian, but the team’s performance last weekend was not as good as Knights coach Peter Tonder had hoped for, despite taking fifth overall among 15 teams.

Having already qualified the 200-yard freestyle relay for state, Tonder and the Knights hoped to advance the 200 medley and 400 freestyle relays as well in their one last chance.

However, it just was not meant to be.

The 200 medley team of Adrian, JR Ramos-Yap, Andrew Pohl and Kyle Spencer came closest, about a second and a half slower than it needed to be to make the cut after Saturday’s finals, finishing fifth. The top four teams all posted qualifying times.

“We haven’t all swam the best times in the same day in our relays,” Tonder said. “We had our chances. We should have been quicker, and we could have been quicker.”

Bremerton had a better performance on the diving board, where Kris Jones’ fifth-place finish and Matt Lindberg taking the 10th spot were pleasant surprises for the Knights.

Ramos-Yap captured a sixth-place ribbon in the 100 butterfly, swimming the event in 57.17 seconds. He also made it to the finals of the 100 free with teammate Adrian, finishing 12th in 55.12 seconds.

The Knights’ 200 free relay of Spencer, Lindberg, Scott Burt and Glen Milligan, however, could not perform to its earlier season standard and took seventh, more than 10 seconds off the state qualifying time it achieved earlier in the year.

Bremerton’s last try at a state qualifier fell more than five seconds short with a 3:33.31 finish by Adrian, Milligan, Pohl and Ramos-Yap. In preliminaries, the Knights swam almost half a second faster. The team finished fifth in the event.

Despite wanting more from the meet, Tonder praised Pohl, Ramos-Yap and Lindberg for having some of the team’s strongest showings.

“By far, (this is) as good a year as we’ve had,” he said. “We should have done better today. We hope to do better at state.”

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