State Podium Finish

Third good for now, but next year ...
NHS girls swimming team earns two first-place medals and one third in 6A championships
By: Seth Gordon Published: 2/23/2011 8:00:00 AM
Photo By: B. Scott Anderson
Celebrating third —
(From left) Anna Dolyniuk, Catherine Mays, Meghan O’Halloran, Alysha Bush and Cassie Beecher take the podium at the OSAA state swimming championships last weekend at Mount Hood Community College.

GRESHAM — The 2011 Tiger girls are the best team in Newberg school history.

Thanks to two state championship relay teams, the Tigers scored 110 points and finished a school-best third place at the Class 6A swimming state championships at Mount Hood Community College.

“We made Newberg history,” said an exuberant senior Meghan O’Halloran, moments after stepping off the third-place podium with her teammates.

O’Halloran, along with sophomore teammates Cassie Beecher, Alysha Bush and Catherine Mays, found it hard to contain her excitement. After all, the NHS girls swim team doesn’t have the rich history of state championships or top-four finishes that some of the other programs at Newberg High School do. In fact, last year’s 12th-place finish at state was a solid year for the Tigers.

Newberg coach Rich Tobergte, in his 11th year, has been there when the times were high and the number of swimmers were low. Saturday’s performance was clearly a benchmark in the program.

“It’s huge,” he said with a smile. “These girls here deserve it. They work hard and they don’t just work hard during the high school swim season. They do it year-round. It’s also kind of special because I’ve coached most of these girls since they were 4, 5, 6, 7 years old.”

Newberg, which set five school records en route to the third-place finish, won the 200 freestyle relay and the 400 freestyle relay and finished third in the 200 medley relay. Bush also finished second in the 100 freestyle and O’Halloran was ninth in the 200 freestyle (2:00.78) and eighth in the 100 freestyle (55.43).

Newberg was favored to win the 200 freestyle after it put up a preliminary time of 1:38.73 on Friday. In the finals, the quartet won with a time of 1:39.00, beating out second-place Reynolds (1:39.72).

The crucial, and perhaps most unexpected, win for the Tigers came in the final event of the night — the 400 freestyle relay. Although Newberg’s preliminary time of 3:40.03 was good enough for a second-place finish, Newberg’s time was nearly three seconds off the pace of Jesuit’s preliminary time of 3:37.27. In the finals, though, it didn’t matter. Newberg led the field from start to finish and won the race with a 3:36.15, holding off Jesuit, which finished second at 3:36.68.

“We pulled it out,” Bush said. “It was one of those things of how bad did we want it. We wanted it really badly — more than any of the other girls out there.”

Tobergte said the time drop all had to do with the team’s belief that it could be done.

“They believed they could win the 200 freestyle relay,” he said. “I don’t know that they necessarily believed (Friday) they could win the 400 freestyle relay.”

The Newberg quartet of Beecher, Bush, Mays and junior Anna Dolyniuk placed third in the 200 medley with a time of 1:51.68. Bush also scored a second-place finish in the 100 freestyle with an All-American consideration time of 51.64, which puts her in an “elite category” of high school swimmers, Tobergte said.

“It was just a great performance by her,” the coach said.

With the team’s best finish in school history now official, the Tigers aren’t going to rest on their laurels. After all, the Tigers worked tirelessly throughout the year to improve upon last year’s 12th-place state finish. They saw the results Saturday.

“It’s an incredible feeling,” Beecher said.

The Tigers are already looking forward to next season with the hopes of knocking off team state champion Jesuit.

“We’re coming back next year for sure,” Mays said, “So I guess we better be training hard ... We made our statement this year. We just going to get bigger and stronger, so that’s good.”

“We want to be first next year,” Mays said. “We want to knock them off the podium.”

Tobergte liked what he heard from his swimmers.

“They’re definitely riding high on emotion today, which is awesome,” he said. “They rode the wave in the medley relay when they got third and rode that all the way to the end.”