FEDERAL WAY — Fatigue wasn’t stopping Mark Kim.
Sure, the Camas High swimmer was a bit gassed after successfully defending his Class 4A 500 freestyle state title Saturday, but gutting it out is part of swimming when you’re in back-to-back events.
“You swim to bring out the best in ourselves,” Kim said. “Ultimately, you have to push through.”
Not 10 minutes after the junior won his second individual title of the day in 4 minutes, 38.54 seconds, he anchored the Papermakers’ 200 free relay in a race that put an exclamation point on a dominant day in the pool by Camas, as it captured the program’s first state title at the King County Aquatic Center.
Its first-place and team-record time of 1:26.82 edged out Curtis (1:27.08), which led to the quartet of Eric Wu, Jaden Kim, Tom Utas to high-fives, smiles and an emphatic slam of the water by Kim in celebration.
What made Camas’ day more impressive is not only did Camas top runner-up Skyline by 96 points, but its 302 points is the highest for a 4A team since Snohomish racked up 247 points in 2008.
While the talent was there all season, and strength in numbers favoring the Papermakers, Kim said he was still surprised how Camas pulled off a state title.
“We didn’t know what to do with ourselves,” he said. “… these guys are so amazing.”
Kim’s victory in the 200 free (1:40.76) means he now has four individual titles in the 200 and 500 free over the past two seasons.
For Utas, a senior who will swim next season at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta, Canada), he ended his career with his first state title. He won the 50 free in 21.07, and admitted feeling the pressure wanting to go out an individual state champion after close finishes over his four-year career at state. As a junior in 2016, he was runner-up in the 100 free and fourth in the 50.
“This was my last year,” Utas said, “and my team was pretty confident in me.”
His winning time also was a personal best and topped last year’s champion, Heritage’s Maksim Dolbinin, who placed fifth (21.50). He also was third in the 100 free (46.74).
How his team won even surprised coach Mike Bemis, who was named Washington State Swim Coaches Association’s coach of the year. Swimmers like ninth-grader Jaden Kim’s second place in the 100 butterfly (51.17), Wu having top-five swims in the 200 IM and 100 breast, Finn McClone and Jeff Fadlovich going fifth and seventh, respectively, in the 100 backstroke and Austin Fogel’s consolation final win in the 500 free, for example, were unexpected points, Bemis said.
“We had that from everybody,” Bemis said. “We had swims (Friday) we really weren’t supposed to have.”
Bemis said the team’s title is a testament to not only his current squad, but to past swimmers who helped set up the Papermakers’ success. Camas was runner-up in 2015 and fourth last winter.
Now, he hopes the buck will be passed to “set it up for teams in the future to and say, “Hey, we did it. Now it’s your turn.”
Union’s Andrew Chang finished eighth in the 100 butterfly and 12th in the 200 IM. Teammate Val Tikhomirov was 13th in the 100 breast.
