BOUNTIFUL — On one hand, the principle players at the Region 4 swim meet on Saturday understood the same thing: There's only meet that ultimately matters, and that meet wasn't taking place on Saturday.
However, while Brighton, American Fork, Lone Peak, Alta and the rest of Region 4 all had their eyes focused firmly on the upcoming 5A state meet, they nonetheless still put on a very entertaining show for the assembled folks inside the South Davis Recreation Center.
There were lots of really good swims, there were lots of really good races, and the whole thing was pretty fun to watch from start to finish. At the end of it, several individuals shined and Brighton — as everyone expected — dominated the team competitions.
Brighton's boys team racked up 554 points to easily dispatch American Fork (394), while Brighton's girls team finished with 528 points to easily beat Lone Peak (377).
The Bengals will be big favorites to win both team championships at the 5A meet in two weeks, and Brighton coach Todd Etherington was generally pleased with what he saw from top to bottom at Saturday's region meet.
"It went alright," he said. "There's always things you wished you would've done a little better, but we saw some good swimming (and) saw some things that we need to try to fix. … I'm very pleased with where we're at right now."
In a meet filled with legitimate stars — defending 5A Swimmers of the Meet Kim Welch of Lone Peak and McKay King of American Fork were amongst the assembled talent — it was a not-so-small 14-year-old freshman that stole the show.
Brighton freshman Long Gutierrez has long been a star in club swimming circles, and he showed Saturday that, even though he won't turn 15 until February 23rd, he is already a star in his first season of high school swimming.
On Saturday, Gutierrez went :50.45 to break a 5A record in the 100 fly and went :21.45 to convincingly win the 50 free.
By way of reference, Mountain Crest superstar Jake Taylor went :50.17 in the 100 fly earlier in the week.
"Not too bad," deadpanned Etherington of Gutierrez' swim in the fly.
Not too bad at all.
Gutierrez, for his part, can't wait to show the rest of the state what he can do at the 5A championships.
"It's the first time it's gonna happen, and I'm psyched about it," he said. "It's gonna be the best thing ever."
Besides Gutierrez, Robby Miner won twice individually and Greg Ballif added an individual for Brighton's boys team.
On the girls side, Amanda Barrett, Kaitlin Overstreet and Abby Alger each won once.
While Saturday's Region 4 meet was a star-studded affair that featured a number of outstanding swims by a number of outstanding swimmers, arguably nobody shined brighter than Brighton senior Ben Stephens.
Seeded in Lane 1 of the slow heat in the 100 back, Stephens drew the loudest cheers of the entire meet when he touched the finishing pad with a time of 1:53.08, a full seven seconds faster than his seed time. What made the crowd cheer louder for Stephens than anyone else is the fact that the senior backstroker deals with severe physical issues.
Neither Etherington nor any of his assistant coaches know exactly what those physical issues are for one simple reason — he's never complained about them.
Instead, Stephens has simply worked as hard as he could to become as fast of a swimmer as he could.
"He's a kid that comes out and busts his butt every day. He's one of the hardest-working kids that we've got," said Etherington. "Before Christmas, he came up and told me he wasn't feeling well on a Wednesday, and we were swimming Alta Thursday. I sent him home Wednesday night, and Thursday morning I got a call from his mom saying he had an emergency appendectomy . . . Later, he was basically apologizing to me for missing practice. That's how hard he works."
All season, Stephens' goal has been to get underneath 2:00 in the 100 back, and he shattered that mark with an outstanding swim in what was his final chance.
Etherington was thrilled for his swimmer afterward.
"It's every bit as rewarding as the stuff that Long and Robby and those guys do," said Etherington. "It's about swimming fast, and fast is relative to you — it's not relative to anybody else."
For everyone that got to see the first heat of the 100 back on Saturday, Stephens was very fast.
e-mail: drasmussen@desnews.com
