Thoughts on a frenzied weekend of 5A swimming

Almost 24 hours have passed since the conclusion of the 5A swim championships and there are still, oh, about a million thoughts ‘ give or take ‘ floating around in my head.
One of the great things about covering swim meets is the fact that they always produce an extraordinary number of storylines. Because of the all the individual aspects of swimming, combined with he team races, it’s never hard to find something to write about.
But this weekend’s 5A meet? Holy cow. Talk about being jam-packed with storylines. Of all the swim meets I’ve covered, I can’t think of anything that even touches this. I wrote 20 inches for my main story ‘ about five-to-eight more than I was supposed to ‘ and could’ve easily written 10 or 15 more without batting an eyelid.
After all that, there are still a number of talking points. Here is my take on a few of them:

‘ First to what has turned into the topic of the day: Joe Pereira’s statement about whom he felt won the meet on the boys side. This has sparked a number of comments underneath my story today.
To be perfectly frank, as I read back through my story, I don’t think I put enough context into his remarks. If he had simply what he said on its own, it wouldn’t be my responsibility to defend it. But I honestly don’t believe that he was trying to take anything away from what West Jordan or Brighton did this weekend. What he was trying to do was point out was how incredibly proud he was of his swimmers.
I didn’t include his complete statement in today’s story because ‘ as I previously mentioned ‘ I wrote way more than I should’ve. However, here it is in its entirety:

‘Everybody talks about it, ‘Well, Skyline just walks through it. They’re just given the state title last year. They’re just given the state title the year before.’ This year, we earned the state title but didn’t get it. Everybody who watched the meet saw every Skyline boy step up and do great things. They saw every Skyline girl give everything they had. That’s the mark of what my coaching is about.
‘Every kid performed. Every kid gave everything they had. Every kid I had here scored a point. I can’t ask for any more than that. If anybody had sat up (in the balcony) ‘any coach or anybody that knew anything about swimming ‘ and watched the entire meet, or you could’ve video-taped it, leaving the whole disqualification stuff out, everybody knows who won. They know who the champion was. That’s what it made it so much better (than previous years).
‘Fifty-four points down, DQ’d from the first relay, coming into the last relay 18 points down? You give us both those relays back ‘ even where we were seeded ‘ and we have it. I’m very proud of the boys ‘ they did their job. I felt like I didn’t hold up my end of the deal. The last relay was my mistake, but I’d rather have it be that way. The boys can blame me all they want. I don’t have a problem with that because they did what they needed to do.’

Feel free to disagree with me ‘ and I’m sure many will ‘ but I don’t believe Joe was trying to put anybody down. He was paying tribute to his swimmers.

OK, onto some other things.

‘ So West Jordan really took this ’300′ business pretty seriously. I wrote in today’s paper about how coach Kevin Fletcher watched the film ’300′ over the summer, was inspired by it and tried to have his team emulate some of the characteristics of the 300 Spartans that were depicted in it.
A couple things to add about the ’300′ reference:
West Jordan bought swim caps with the word ‘Jaguars’ inscribed on the sides, complete with a red line ‘ representing blood ‘ underneath. They ordered the caps last fall and they arrived last week.
Coach Fletcher explained: ‘We said all along 300 is going to win this meet, 300 points is going to win this meet. We need to dig our heels just like those guys did, just like those valiant Greek soldiers did. All those Greek soldiers died, so fortunately it wasn’t a life or death experience for us, but that’s blood there (pointing to the swim caps). We kind of left it in the pool. It was a heck of an effort.’
Also, I learned that West Jordan’s swimmers discovered a workout completed by the actors of ’300′ in preparation for their roles in the film. It was composed of the following exercise sets, all of which added up to 300: 25 pull-ups, 50 deadlifts, 50 windshield wipers, 50 cling-and-presses, 50 jumping up on a box and down, and 25 more pull-ups.
The grueling exercise had to be completed in 20 minutes. All of West Jordan’s swimmers took the test ‘ and passed it ‘ last summer.

‘ Brighton’s swagger is coming back. The Bengals didn’t win a state championship, but the tradition-rich school claimed two second-place trophies this weekend ‘ no matter what you say about the Skyline DQ’s ‘ and showed it was there to race.
‘All in all, it’s nice to see what I remember as Bengal swimming going on again,’ coach Todd Etherington said afterward. ‘Results may not have been ‘ in terms of the championship ‘ what it’s been in years past, but I think the attitude, the way we swam and so on was like it’s been in years past.’

‘ According to UHSAA assistant director Dave Wilkey, the 5A state championships officially sold-out inside the Richards Building at BYU approximately 15 minutes into the meet Saturday.
The balcony area of the Richards Building holds just over 1,200 people, and those seats were essentially filled before the start of the meet Saturday. Standing areas behind the balcony were filled shortly after.