Columbus North’s Daniel Utterback (black CN swim cap) dives in at the start of the 200-yard freestyle during the boys swimming sectional at Columbus North High School.
Tommy Walker | For The Republic
Neither Columbus North nor Columbus East captured the team title or had an individual sectional champion, but they didn’t come away completely empty handed.
The Bull Frogs’ 200-yard freestyle relay team consisting of junior Daniel Utterback, sophomore Isaac Proffitt and seniors Matthew Goble and David Fry finished second with a time of 1 minute, 27.54 seconds, just fast enough to clear the state cut time of 1:27.82 during Saturday’s boys swimming sectional hosted by North.
The relay team will compete in the Boys Swimming State Finals at the Indiana University Natatorium in Indianapolis on the campus of IUPUI. The prelims are set to begin on Friday evening, with consolations and finals on Saturday afternoon.
“I’m really proud. This is a great group of guys,” North coach Brett Findley said. “For Isaac, it’ll be his first time heading to a state meet. They didn’t come away with a win, but at this point, we’re just excited to make sure we got the state cut and move on.”
As a team, the Bull Frogs finished third with 327 points. Bloomington North won the sectional with 427, and Bloomington South was runner-up with 348.
“It’s more than what we were projected to score,” Findley said. “It was a really tough meet. It’s a really fast sectional this year. There’s some really good competition.”
Columbus East finished fifth with 239. East Central was fourth with 323.
“They swam awesome,” East coach Doug Trueblood said. “They really came Thursday (in the prelims). They swam really well to get into the top 16 to be able to swim today. They still held on and dropped again today. Everybody had a best time. We had a couple that were right on the edge of within a couple hundredths (of a second). I’m really excited about how they swam. They stepped up and performed well.”
Now, it’s a waiting for several individuals hoping for callbacks to the state meet. Beyond the state’s 20 sectional champions in each event and others making the state standard, the next-best times from around the state are added until a field of 32 is reached in each event.
For the Bull Frogs, Utterback placed second in the 200 freestyle (1:44.30) and 100 freestyle (47.04). Fry was third in the 100 butterfly (53.08) and fourth in the 50 freestyle (22.12) and Carlos Fabian Aguilar was third in the 500 freestyle (4:51.88). The 400 freestyle relay team of Utterback, Goble, Fabian Aguilar and Fry finished third (3:14.17). Pratt Badve took fourth in the 200 individual medley (2:05.59), and Jude Abdallah was sixth in the 200 IM (2:09.25).
“We had some phenomenal swims. We had a lot of lifetime best swims, and that’s all that you can ask for,” Findley said. “You can only control what happens in your lane. We did the best we could, and I’m really proud of those guys.”
For the Olympians, Misha Machavariani finished second in the 500 freestyle in 4:51.24 and third in the 100 breaststroke in 1:02.32. Dathan Wolf broke his own school record in the 100 backstroke with a time of 53.44, which placed him in third.
East’s Judah Nickoll was fifth in the 100 backstroke (56.26). The 200 medley relay team of Nickoll, Machavariani, Wolf and Jerry Hundley finished fourth (1:42.53), and the 400 freestyle relay team of Nickoll, Cavan Stilson, Machavariani and Wolf took fifth (3:23.61).
“(Wolf) has been doing phenomenal. His head has been in the right space all season. He’s putting in a lot of good work, and it shows in the time,” Trueblood said. “We’ll see what happens. We’re in the waiting game now, so we’ll see what happens. Hopefully, we can get somebody in state and have one more swim, but overall, you can’t be upset. You got to be happy for what these kids did.”
In the diving competition, North’s Cole Wheeler finished second with a score of 355.05 and East’s Gavin Day placed third with a score of 335.55. Both advanced to the diving regional at Jasper at 6 p.m. Tuesday. Max Miller of Bloomington North won the diving with a score of 436.35. The top eight from the diving regional qualify for state.
