High school swimming: Bingham girls, boys capture region titles

SALT LAKE CITY — While Bingham's boys swimmers have received considerable attention over the past several seasons, their female counterparts have largely lived in their shadows.

Throughout that time, however, Bingham's girls team has been steadily, if quietly, building, and Bingham's swimming program showed on Wednesday at the Region 3 championships that it now boasts really strong boys and girls teams.

On the heels of hugely productive meets earlier in the season, Bingham's girls team rode its superior depth to a region championship. Senior Alyssa Kankamp won the 200 free, Kate Westra won the 100 breast and Bingham won the 200 free and 400 free relays to post a 350-264 win over perennial power Kearns.

Meanwhile, Bingham's boys team won its third region title in a row as it finished with 375 points to easily outdistance Kearns (265.5).

"Our guys have obviously been good, and it kind of seems like we get overshadowed sometimes," said senior Kankamp. "But since we've been building, we've got all of these good freshmen. It was really cool to get the same glory that the boys got. We get the same feeling, and we both won, so it was good."

With a number of talented girls following behind, Kankamp helped lead the way at region for Bingham.

Kankamp posted a really solid swim to win the 200 free in 2:02.93 and later finished second in the 500. Behind her, Westra won individually near the end of the meet in the 100 breast, and the Miners simply had more depth than Kearns.

Bingham coach Andee Bouwhuis said her girls team started to shine at the Greg Fernley Invitational last fall and followed it up with an even better showing at the Thanksgiving Invite.

From there, the Miners haven't looked back.

Individually on the girls side, Ciera Marsh (50 free and 100 free), Melissa Bergesen (200 IM and 500 free) and Morgan Giles (100 fly and 100 back) each won twice for Kearns. The Cougars don't have as much depth as they used to, but Marsh, Bergesen and Giles were each stellar at Wednesday's region meet and should be even better next weekend.

"Great swims from those guys," said Kearns coach Chris Horne.

Meanwhile, Bingham dotted the board pretty well to win convincingly on the boys side.