Arizona High School Meet of Champions Crowns Best of the Best

2018 Arizona High School Meet of Champions

• November 7th, 2018
• Phoenix Country Day Aquatic Center, Paradise Valley, Arizona
• D1 recap
• D2 recap
• D3 recap
• Meet of Champions Results (PDF)

After completion of the formal state championship meets a week earlier, Arizona, the AIA aggregated the best-of-the-best from across the 3 divisions into a brand new format: a Meet of Champions. The top 10 swimmers from across the three divisions were invited to race the same events that they had a weekend earlier. While no team titles were given, the result was a list of champions-of-champions representing the best high school swimmers in the state.

With former D2 powerhouse Chaparral returning to D1, most of the event champions still came from the biggest high schools, but the lower divisions did take a good chunk of the wins.

The meet started with a swap of sorts. After Chaparral’s boys won the 200 medley at the D1 state championship meet, Brophy Prep held on better and won at the Meet of Champions 4 days later. The biggest difference is that Chaparral subbed Anthony Clason in for Matthew Leblanc on the breaststroke leg – Leblanc’s 25.73 split at the state meet waws the difference-maker for Chaparral. He was put instead in the 200 and 400 free relays – which rules seem to indicate Chaparral shouldn’t have been allowed to do. We’ve reached out to the AIA to confirm the rules as written.

Update: after we reached out, organizers acknowledged that the above is correct, and Chaparral’s 400 free relay was disqualified from the meet. Updated results are linked at the top of this article.

Among the winners from the lower divisons was Division II 200 IM winner Jadan Nabor of Verrado High School. The junior swam 1:52.57 to win the 200 IM last week, adding just 6-tenths from his state-winning swim.

The girls’ 200 IM was won in an even more impressive result by Arizona State commit Kate McBratney, a senior at American Leadership Academy High. McBratney won the Division III (smallest schools) title earlier this month in 2:03.06, and dropped another half-a-second to 2:02.53 to win the Meet of Champions title. Both the D2 and D1 champions swam the event, though the runner-up was Chaparral sophomore Riley Courtney, who improved by more than a second from her 4th-place time at State to take 2nd at MOC.

One event later, in the boys’ 50 free, Desert Vista’s Brevin Bartsch won the boys’ 50 free. At the state meet, he won the Division I B Final in 21.49. While that put him only 9th place overall, his 21.49 there was the 5th-fastest in the division, and fast enough to earn him a spot at this meet.

He took advantage, and improved to 21.11 to win the MOC title.

Other event champions who dropped time at MOC:

• Paradise Valley junior Sadie Edwards dropped her 100 fly win from a 55.20 at the D2 championships to a 55.12 at MOC, winning both.
• Phoenix Country Day’s Quinn Murphy won the girls’ 100 free in 50.75, which was .23 seconds better than her winning time from the D3 meet. She won by 2-and-a-half seconds at that D3 meet, but won a much more competitive MOC meet by .04 seconds.
• Cactus Shadows’ Jered Moore was the runner-up at the D2 meet in the boys’ 100 back in 50.71. At the MOC, he improved to 50.09 and won the title – including jumping the D2 champion and aforementioned 200 IMer Nabor.
• Paradise Valley’s Sadie Edwards won the girls’ 100 breaststroke in 1:02.45 – a massive drop from the 1:03.41 she did at the D2 state meet. At that state meet, she lost to Isabella Fratesi by .05 seconds.