COLUMBIA — For an entire season, Holly Rickman was committed to having her swimmers embrace a team mentality but also have the confidence needed to win. It all came to fruition Saturday, as the South Aiken girls won the Class AAAA state championship, while the boys finished second overall in the South Carolina High School League state championships at the Carolina Natatorium.
The Thoroughbreds were pushed over the top with a strong finish from both teams, as they won the 400-yard freestyle relay with respectively times of 3:22.61 and 3:41.04 – both easily their season bests – to finish with 392.5 and 366 total points, respectively. The boys and girls also took first and second in their respective 200 free relay.
Eastside (whose girls finished second overall) won the AAAA boys’ title with 484 total points, but it was nonetheless a dominant effort for South Aiken to cap a dominant season. In her first year as a head coach, Rickman expected her boys swimmers to be in this position and she wanted to find ways to push her girls even further to find the confidence to beat the tough competition in the state like Eastside.
“Once we got into the season and I started seeing them race and come into their own, I was like, ‘they have a really good shot.’ They really found their swag, they’re really confident and I’m super proud of all of them,” Rickman said. “We definitely had our sights set on Eastside; we knew they were going to be our team’s biggest competition, and we definitely wanted to come and represent and show how hard we’ve worked all season, and I think we did a great job of doing that.”
Seniors Audrey Robinson and Hannah Price medaled in their last meet for the T-Breds. Robinson finished first in the 50-yard freestyle and the 100-yard butterfly and while Price helped South Aiken finish second in the 200-yard medley. All of the T-Breds’ men’s swimmers will return next season, so expectations will be even higher.
“It means everything. I would love to say I did all this work, but it was all them. I just gave them the tools; I told them that over and over again, I’ve got the toolbox and gave them the tools, and they’re the ones who decided how to use them,” Rickman said.
North Augusta and Aiken High also had impressive showings at state. The Yellow Jackets finished fifth in men’s and eighth in women’s, in part due to their third place finish in the boys’ 200 medley relay. Zak Griffin took third in the 100 breastroke, Drew Fuller finished second in the 100 butterfly and Emily Sam finished second in the 100 breaststroke.
With just 13 total state-qualifying swimmers, the Hornets’ boys had six top-five finishes to finish eighth in. Jason Kekacs finished his high school career with a first place finish in the 200 free (1:45.34) and 500 free (4:46.42), while Samaha finished third in the 200 free (1:48.52) and second in the 100 free. Saturday was a step in the right direction for an Aiken program that is hungry to build itself into something bigger.
“I’m thrilled. To only have six boys and seven boys here, to finish as well as they did, I’m so happy,” first year Aiken head coach Karen Skiff said. “They swam so well. They looked so good in the pool, they’ve been working very hard. The perfect way for Jason to go out as a senior, two first places. Can’t ask for anything better than that.”
Story By Brandon Mauk, sports reporter for the Aiken Standard. He graduated from St. John’s University in 2016. Follow him on Twitter @BrandonMauk1994.