For the first time in at least four years, Kent-Meridian High’s boys swim team has big hopes for the postseason.
The Royals have two swimmers — junior Vitaliy Suzdanets and freshman Kevin Kim — who have the potential to qualify for Class 4A districts and possibly state in their swimming careers, coach Amanda Saunders said. In her four years as coach, Saunders said no swimmers have qualified for districts or state.
“They (Kent-Meridian’s swim team) haven’t had someone go that far for postseason for a while,” she said. “If they start doing that it will bring the interest in or get them to swim outside of the season.”
Kim has qualified for four events for the South Puget Sound League meet and as of Jan. 12 was about .2 seconds away from qualifying for districts in both the 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard freestyle.
Kim characterized himself as a sprinter but said he also enjoys the challenge of the 200 individual medley, which is composed of 50 yards of each stroke — butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle.
Suzdanets has qualified for two events in league and is close to qualifying for districts in the 50 freestyle.
He said he prefers shorter races, although he recently started swimming the 100 butterfly.
“I am more of a sprinter than distance,” Suzdanets said.
Kim started swimming about two years ago on his own and turned out for the swim team this season.
“My dad told me to stay with it and try it,” Kim said.
Kim said he spent a lot of time swimming laps at the Kent-Meridian pool over the summer to prepare for the swim season.
“I live really close walking distance (to the pool), so I just walked back and forth to swim for an hour or two,” he said.
Suzdanets started swimming as a freshman at the encouragement of his brother who was a senior on the team.
“I thought if my brother is doing it I want to join,” he said. “When I joined, I didn’t have any prior experience. I knew how to swim but I didn’t know how to swim competitively.”
During the summers, Suzdanets said he swims at Lake Meridian.
Suzdanets admits that he didn’t know what to expect when joining the swim team but has grown to love the sport.
“Now that I am excelling this is a real good sport,” he said. “It is really fun, competitive, gets my adrenaline pumping.”
Both Kim and Suzdanets have short-term goals of making it to districts and long-term hopes of swimming at state.
“It feels good to make it to leagues,” Suzdanets said. “I made it to leagues last year (in the 50 freestyle),” he said. “I was really close to making it to districts (last year) but I didn’t. That kind of bummed me out. I came this year with an agenda to make it and I’m hoping I will.”
Kim said he is pleased with how well he has swam in his first season.
“I am happy I made it to leagues,” he said. “I am just going to try my best at leagues.”
Saunders said it is invaluable to have swimmers like Kim and Suzdanets, even though the team hasn’t won a meet this season.
“For me personally, I am just proud,” she said. “Just that they are working harder. We are doing something right.”
Saunders said the 22-member team is young, with only four seniors. At the beginning of the season, 10 of the boys didn’t know how to swim. Now all of the swimmers can complete a race.
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