Class 3A State Swim: Logan Robinson brings home gold, Booker T. Washington boys takes third overall
A five-plus hour trip to central Florida for the Booker T. Washington boys swimming and diving team was golden.
And for one particular swimmer, he ended his prep career in flourishing style.
Logan Robinson stood on top of the podium on three separate occasions to help the Wildcats boys team claim third overall at the Class 3A State Championship on Saturday from the Florida Aquatics Swimming and Training facility in Ocala.
The squad produced a top-five finisher in eight of 12 events en route to collecting 200 points. One week after winning the Region 1-3A title, Nease captured the state title with 311 points. Chiles (251) was the state runner-up.
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“Today was very successful,” Booker T. Washington head coach Whitley Voeltz said after the meet. “They showed up and did what they needed to do in prelims and tonight they followed through with it and finished it off and did really well. Nease and Chiles had super duper strong teams with a lot of extra athletes, they raced hard and super fast. But our kids did the best they could and everybody did their best times. … We couldn’t have anything else from them because they all left it in the water.”
After earning All-American consideration at state last season as a junior, Robinson did so again as a senior by aiding the team to a win in the 200-yard medley relay before taking individual titles at the 200 freestyle and the 100 butterfly.
He became the first Wildcats swimmer to win multiple titles at a state meet since when Steffen Mount also captured the 200 freestyle and 100 butterfly in 2014. The program now has produced state champions in two of the last three years, as Justin Toth earned gold in the 1-meter dive in 2021.
“It felt like I fulfilled myself and it satisfied me. Now, I’m done,” Robinson said.
The senior’s first trip to the podium came after the day’s first event as teamed with Ian Malone, Max Little and Coulson Voeltz to victory in the medley relay. The foursome turned in a time of 1 minute, 33.17 seconds, which was more than two seconds ahead of second place.
“It was amazing,” Robinson said of sharing the victory with his teammates. “It was like a dream come true. We wanted it really bad and then we got it.”
Next up for the senior was the very next boys event in the 200 freestyle. Prior to the trip to Ocala, he said this race would be his toughest despite entering as the No. 1 seed because he believed that his stiffest competition had yet to show all of their cards.
Robinson quieted his doubt by clocking in at 1:36.72, 2.2 second ahead of runner up Gabriel Tortola, of St. Thomas Aquinas.
“So I had a lot of nerves coming into it. … It felt really nice inside the water,” the senior said. “In that last 50 (yards), I pushed myself to the point where my arms felt like they were gonna fall off, but it paid off.”
Later, in the butterfly event, Robinson admits to his body beginning to shut down after two intense races. While he says underwater work wasn’t the best, he still claimed a comfortable victory in spite of the fatigue by turning in a time of 47.18. Sebastian River’s Louis St. Petery (49.74) placed second.
“That's what GPAC (Greater Pensacola Aquatic Club) and Washington trains us for,” Robinson remarked. “It's just being able to race over and over and over again and give us our 100 percent effort over and over and over again.”
In the last event of the meet, Robinson joined Malone, Little and Coulson Voeltz to anchor the foursome to a second-place finish in the 400 freestyle relay (3:03.62).
Elsewhere, Malone closed out a strong sophomore campaign with third-place finishes in both the 50 freestyle (21.21) and the 100 freestyle (45.8). Meanwhile, Little earned fifth in both the 200 individual medley (1:56.45) and 100 breaststroke (58.31).
While she did not advance for an A or B Final, Abigail Robinson, the lone state qualifier for the Booker T.’s girls team, placed 19th in the 500 freestyle (5:23.11). She shaved four seconds off her previous best time.
“All the other kids on the team had good scoring swims,” Whitney Voeltz said. “Literally everybody did their best times for prelims and finals, and their splits in relays were still even quicker at night than they were in the morning for the most part.”
Among other area schools in boys competition, Pace’s Donovan Lawerence earned a podium spot by taking eighth in the 1-meter dive with 303.3 points.
Class 3A Championships
Area Results
Boys
200 medley relay: 1. Booker T. Washington (Ian Malone, Max Little, Logan Robinson, Coulson Voeltz), 1:33.17; 12. Gulf Breeze (Kevin Herr, Addison Lee, Tristan Seeley, Ben Ashford), 1:41.34
200 freestyle: 1. L. Robinson, Booker T. Washington, 1:36.72; 18. Ashford, Gulf Breeze, 1:47.82
200 individual medley: 5. Little, 1:56.45
50 freestyle: 3. Malone, 21.21
Dive: 8. Donovan Lawerence, Pace, 303.3; 12. Donivan Alexander, Booker T. Washington, 256.7
100 butterfly: 1. L. Robinson, Booker T. Washington, 47.18; 10. Braedan Jacobs, Tate, 51.13; 14. Aidan Hall, Booker T. Washington, 52.91; 20. Cain Scoggins, Booker T. Washington, 53.42
100 freestyle: 3. Malone, Booker T. Washington, 45.8; 13. Voeltz, Booker T. Washington, 47.89; 16. Jacobs, Tate, 48.69; 17. Ashford, Gulf Breeze, 48.49
200 freestyle relay: 12. Booker T. Washington (Hall, Landon Garcia, Scoggins, Kouper Kraus), 1:30.75
100 backstroke: 13. Voeltz, Booker T. Washington, 55.27
100 breaststroke: 5. Little, Booker T. Washington, 58.31; 19. Lee, Gulf Breeze, 1:01.17
400 freestyle relay: 2. Booker T. Washington (Malone, Voeltz, Little, L. Robinson), 3:06.34
Girls
200 medley relay: 13. Gulf Breeze (Olivia Ahearn, Caroline Smith, Alexis Montgomery, Lily Walker), 1:56.53
Dive: 15. Lillian Vige, Tate, 316.45; 17. Ashley Beam, Gulf Breeze, 241.3
100 butterfly: 18. Josephine Harris, Pace, 1:01.85; 19. Smith, Gulf Breeze, 1:01.98
500 freestyle: 19. Abigail Robinson, Booker T. Washington, 5:23.11; 20. Lauren Armstrong, Tate, 5:24.83
Patrick Bernadeau is a sports reporter for the Pensacola News Journal. He can be reached at (772) 985-9692, on X at @PatBernadeau or via email at pbernadeau@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: 3A State Swim: Led by Robinson's three titles, Booker T. Washington takes third
