Boys swimming: Sequim swimmers break two school marks at state meet

Sequim’s boys swim team members saw their season come to an end at the state 2A finals in Federal Way last week with a couple of school records.

The Wolves’ 200 medley relay of Jax Thaxton, Liam Payne, Kaleb Needoba and Alex Berikoff scored a B finals berth with a 1:51.14 finish in Feb. 15, then scored an 11th place finish overall on Feb. 16 with a 1:49.69 — breaking their own school mark set earlier this season by about 1.4 seconds.

Sequim’s 200 free relay team of Thaxton, Needoba, Berikoff and Zen Graham beat three relays with faster seed times in the preliminaries on Feb. 15 with a 1:37.70 mark — breaking a school record set in 2011 and two seconds better than their own seed time. The squad wound up 14th overall after finishing with a near identical time of 1:37.72 the following day.

Sequim’s 400 free relay team of Graham, Payne, Deven Biehler and Michael Mattern-Hall clocked in at 3:48.54 to place 21st.

Thaxton was Sequim’s lone individual competitor, placing 21st in the 50 free (24.05) and 23rd in the backstroke (1:02.93).

Overall the Wolves placed 21st at state with 18 team points.

The Olympic League represented well at the state 2A finals, with Olympic’s Trojans winning the team title with 293 points, and Kingston taking third (238 points). Port Angeles, boosted by Andrew Methner’s third-place finish in diving, placed 14th with 48 points.