Park City, Ogden earn titles

PROVO — Ladies and gentlemen, there is a new queen of the 3A swimming castle.

Park City's girls team dramatically ended Judge's five-year reign atop 3A swimming Saturday evening inside the Richards Building. Down 41 points based on seed times before anyone had dived into the pool at the 3A championships, the Miners collectively needed to get fast swims from everybody to have a chance to take down the Bulldogs.

That's exactly what happened.

From start to finish, Park City swam extremely fast, got enough kids to move up in just enough spots and had just enough in the tank to pip Judge to the 3A girls title by five points, 413.5-408.5.

"Oh ... my ... gosh," said an understandably exuberant Lyndsay Shand afterward.

And in what played out as one of the closest and most intense state swim meets in recent memory, Ogden emerged with a pulsating 339-317 win over Wasatch on the boys side. Before last year, the Tigers hadn't won a state title since 1947. Now, they've won two in a row.

Park City senior Samantha Case won twice over the weekend, including a title Saturday in the 100 fly — coach Mike Werner labeled the 3A championships as the "meet of her life" — and Shand dropped four seconds Saturday in the 500 free.

However, what made the difference for Park City was the performance of everyone else. Whether it was freshman Ali Murphy shaving four seconds to go from 22nd to 12th in the 100 free, or Caitlin Palmer and Hannah Skarsten moving up big in the 100 breast, Park City had bright spots across the board.

"The main thing was, we wanted our kids to just swim and have fun and do their best," said Werner, "and that's what the kids did."

Judge senior Alex Carter (100 free and 100 breast) won twice individually for the Bulldogs, who swam well — relatively speaking — but just didn't have quite enough to hang on.

Judge coach Matt Finnigan, though obviously disappointed to see his team's long run end, heaped praise on Park City.

"It goes either way when it's that close," he said, "but they just had a better team, a better coach (and) they matched up well with us."

Aside from Park City, third-place Logan also enjoyed an outstanding day on the girls side. Erin Pabst and Janessa Gammill won individually.

Werner pointed out how much his school enjoyed fighting with Judge and Logan.