All Local, All The Time
All Local, All The Time
There was more than one moment of levity between the friendly rivals at the St. Vrain All District, held at the Mountain View Aquatic Center on Jan. 15.
Junior Jamieson Legh took first in the 200 IM, and then won the 100 butterfly at the All District meet on Jan. 15, duplicating her performance at the previous week's Mustang Invite.
After a pandemic hiatus in 2021, the girls swim and dive teams from St. Vrain Valley high schools renewed their friendly rivalry at the annual All-District Meet, held Jan. 15 at Mt. View Aquatics Center. Now featuring six teams, after the addition of Frederick, the competition was as fierce as ever, and the final results entirely familiar.
For the eighth straight time, the voluminous Silver Creek squad took first place in the team standings, thanks to some speedy relays and a strong contingent of divers. Behind them, also for the eighth time, was Niwot, which made up for its lack of numbers with very strong performances "across the board," second-year head coach Kyle Bachrodt said afterwards.
"I don't know the exact percentage, but most of our swims were best times today, after three meets back-to-back-to-back...What this team did to take second place today is huge, especially considering how tired they are. I'm tired, and I didn't even swim, so I know how exhausted these girls are. It's incredible."
Niwot swimmers went on the road and won duals against Thompson Valley on Jan. 13 and then against Boulder on Jan. 14, but that didn't seem to slow them down much on their third day of competition at the All-District meet. Paced by senior Mary Codevilla and junior Jamieson Legh, Niwot swimmers took first place in seven of the meet's 12 events, and were second in three of the relays, giving them 455 points in the team standings, well behind the Raptors (791), who had four of the top five divers on the day.
All-American and defending Class 4A champion Codevilla added two more medals to her large collection, in the 100- and 200-yd. freestyle events, the latter by 11 seconds. She and Legh then led the Cougars to a win in the 200-yd. freestyle relay with a time of 1 minute, 42.59 seconds, nearly four seconds faster than runner-up Erie.
As for the junior, Legh admitted to being tired ahead of the meet, but it didn't keep her from picking up two more wins, first in the 200-yd individual medley (2:14.31), and then in the 100-yd. butterfly (59:45), two events she dominated the week before at the Mustang Invite.
"This is one of the roughest meets I've had in a while," Legh said. "Originally, I was only supposed to swim in two of the three meets, but with a couple of girls out with COVID, the coach asked me to step in, and I knew it was going to be brutal."
Elsewhere for the Cougars, junior Steph Mow took first in the 100 backstroke with a season-best time of 1:02.27, and also swam on the winning 200 freestyle relay. Fellow junior Julianna Strope had a convincing win in the 100-yd. breaststroke, outpacing her competitor by three seconds. Niwot also saw top-10 finishes from Cielle Burnett (100 freestyle, 100 back), Mya Blair (100 butterfly, 200 freestyle), Mackenzie Simon (100 butterfly, 200 freestyle), Reese Lavigne (100 back), Mina Altshuler (100 back), Daisy Bui (100 breast), and Shefali Joshi (500 freestyle).
The Cougars have just a handful of regular season meets left before the conference finals on Feb. 4, and then the Class 4A championships on Feb. 11. After their gritty performance at All-City, both Bachrodt and Legh are confident that Niwot's swimmers have their fastest times ahead of them.
"We might not have the numbers at meets like this, but I think that going into state we will be able to show more of what we're made of," Legh said. "Once we have the full team together and back to full health, there's a lot more to come."
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