Simpson, Christian guaranteed podium finishes
Feb. 15—FISHERS — A singular goal of returning to the state swim finals came one step closer to reality for Pendleton Heights senior Jacob Simpson.
In the Fishers sectional preliminaries Thursday, Simpson earned the top seed for Saturday's finals in the 100-yard butterfly — in a school-record time of 50.63 seconds — as well as in the 100-yard backstroke, both of the events he qualified for the state finals in a year ago.
Simpson obliterated his butterfly seeding time of 54.05 seconds and also bettered the 51.50 he swam at last year's state finals to earn a 19th-place finish.
"At sectional, I always cut a lot of time from my in-season time and go up quite a bit of places from my seed," he said. "A bunch of these guys save themselves for finals, which is pretty smart. I just get my nerves behind the block. I get excited, and I just want to go."
"He's wanted that (record) really bad, especially this year his eyes were really set on that," PH coach Amanda Safford said. "I think he knew that this year was the year he would be giving it his best shot, and he did. He just made it look really easy in the water."
He edged Henry Ko of Yorktown by .04 of a second for the butterfly win, but his 52.69 in the backstroke was enough to hold off Jacob Frey from Hamilton Southeastern by .82 of a second.
He was the top seed in the butterfly at last year's sectional as well before settling for a third-place finish and advancing on his time. Simpson knows the competition will ramp up their efforts in the finals, and he needs to be ready.
"I'm just going to go out and sprint and have some fun," Simpson said. "I'm just going to go out and try to hold that."
He was not the only Arabians swimmer to have a solid day as fellow senior Ian Christian guaranteed himself a pair of podium finishes in the sprints as he grabbed a fifth-place finish in the 50-yard freestyle before coming back and earning a third-place spot in the 100-yard freestyle.
As one of just two area individuals to lock in top-eight finishes in Saturday's finals, Christian was noticeably fired up after the prelims concluded.
"I'm happy with all my times. I've improved this season," Christian said. "I have no doubt that Saturday I'm going to bring it even better and get an even better time on it."
"(Christian) is one of those that when he has great competition he gets after it, and my money is on him," Safford added. "He works well under pressure, and we've seen this past year that his turns under water have significantly improved and make him an even stronger swimmer."
It will be a busy Saturday for both Simpson and Christian as the duo also qualified for the sectional finals in a pair of relay events.
Along with Lijah Brindley and Parker Christenson, they placed fourth in the 200-yard medley relay with a time of 1:42.91 in the first event of the meet and closed out the event with a runner-up swim in the 400-yard freestyle relay, this time with Brindley and Evan McKinney.
The latter relay team could advance to the state finals with another strong swim Saturday, perhaps making it to Indianapolis on time.
Levi Cox, Reese Dixon, Nathan Ghosh and Christenson made it three PH relay teams in the finals after they qualified sixth in the 200-yard freestyle relay.
Anderson also boasts three relay teams in the finals Saturday.
The 200-freestyle relay team — Clayton Lindzy, Kaleb Dean, Zach Skinner and Konner Mace — and the 400-yard freestyle relay team — Kian Wilcox, Lindzy, Dean and Mace — advanced with fifth-place finishes.
In the 200-yard freestyle relay, Camron Dawson and Kameron King joined Parker King and Wilcox to earn a seventh-place position with a time of 2:03.07.
The sectional will continue Saturday at Fishers with the diving preliminaries being held at 9 a.m. and the swimming and diving finals beginning at 1 p.m. Individual and relay sectional champions receive automatic berths in the state finals the following Friday and Saturday at the IUPUI Natatorium before the balance of the state field is filled in on the basis of times.
The top four divers will advance to Tuesday's diving regional at Homestead.
Contact Rob Hunt at
or 765-640-4886.
