FLOWOOD — For two years, Adrienne Eckstein came into the Mississippi Association of Independent Schools Overall Swim Meet hoping to win a state championship, only to fall agonizingly short.

Not this time. On Wednesday, she reigned supreme.

The St. Aloysius senior won individual titles in the 50-yard freestyle and 50-yard backstroke, and was part of the winning 200-yard medley relay team in her final major high school meet.

“I’m really happy. I was a little nervous, but it worked out. That’s a good way to end my high school swim career,” said Eckstein, who finished second in the 50 backstroke in 2015 and 2016, and was also second in the 50 freestyle last year. “The 50 back is my favorite. It’s made for me, and I’ve been second in it every year. It’s nice to get first. It feels good to look around at the end and there’s nobody else but me.”

Eckstein teamed up with Ann Elizabeth Farthing, Chandler Tucker and Samantha Graves on the winning medley relay. The same group finished second in the 200-yard freestyle relay, and led St. Al to a second-place finish in the team standings.

St. Al totaled 202 points, well behind state champion Jackson Prep’s 313 ½, but comfortably ahead of third-place MRA’s 167 ½ total. Jackson Academy was fourth with 165 points, and Hartfield Academy was fifth with 156. At the state meet, the boys and girls’ scores are combined from two divisions, Grades 7-9 and Grades 10-12.

In addition to Eckstein’s excellent performance, Farthing won individual titles in the 50-yard breastroke and 50-yard butterfly, with times of 34.98 and 29.99 seconds, respectively. Leah Larson won the 50 butterfly and was second in the 100 freestyle in the Grades 7-9 division, meaning half of St. Al’s female swimmers at the meet walked out of the pool with at least one state championship to their credit.

“They did really well. They were the ones I was preaching to all year that they had to pull their weight, because that’s usually where Prep outdoes us,” St. Al coach Mathew Mixon said. “We only have five or six girls on the team, total, so they had to pull their weight and I’m happy with that.”

The boys’ team had its share of highlights as well, but a couple of the biggest came with bittersweet asterisks.
The 200-yard freestyle relay team of Tommy Martin, Adam Eckstein, Jacob Waisner and Connor Clark beat the state record with a time of 1 minutes, 36.14 seconds, but had to settle for second place. Hartfield won the race in 1:34.41.

The same swimmers seemed to find redemption in the last event of the meet, the 200-yard medley relay. They won easily, with a time of 1:48.42 and missed the state record by .02 seconds — then found out about 10 minutes later that they had been disqualified for an illegal stroke during the butterfly portion of the relay.

Mixon said referees ruled that Waisner had bent his elbows too far on his final stroke before handing off to the freestyler Clark for the last leg. He also said he was not happy with the ruling in a meet where swimmers who were struggling to even complete laps in some events were not disqualified.

“I fought it as much as possible, but there’s only so much I can do. I don’t agree with the call. It’s frustrating, because our swimmers know what they’re doing and there were a lot of swimmers that were not nearly as efficient and not doing the strokes nearly as well,” Mixon said. “It feels like if you want to judge them, you ought to judge them across the board the same way. Just because this school is a little bit more advanced doesn’t mean they need to be judged more advanced. We were swimming at a more advanced level, so we were being judged at a more advanced level whereas some of the teams that were not were getting a little more leniency. But that’s sports. That’s how it goes.”

After the disqualification was announced, St. Al’s swimmers huddled around a phone watching a replay of the race to try and spot the infraction. Before that, they were in a more jovial mood about missing the state record by a fraction of a second. DQ or not, they dropped nearly 10 seconds off their previous best time.

“We’ll remember never to clip our fingernails before a meet,” Eckstein joked.

Minus the vacated relay championship, it was a solid day for St. Al’s boys’ swimmers.

Adam Eckstein won the 50-yard backstroke in a thrilling three-way duel with Clark and Jackson Prep’s Ashton William Heath.

The three swimmers finished within three-tenths of a second of each other. Eckstein won in 27.24 seconds and pumped his fist and let out a howl when the times were posted on the scoreboard. Heath was second in 27.41 seconds, and Clark third in 27.56.

“When we touched, we all thought we won. It’s fun to have races like that,” said Clark, a senior. He posted another third-place finish in the 100 freestyle, just ahead of teammate Andrew Ulmer.

Martin had two second-place individual finishes, in the 50 freestyle and 50 breaststroke. His time of 23.84 seconds in the freestyle was more than a second behind the lightning-quick time of 22.57 posted by Jackson Prep’s Jack Zhu. Martin swam the breaststroke in 29.22 seconds, but Hartfield’s Thomas Chain won it in 27.67.
The overall performance of the team, Eckstein and Clark said, was what they’ll remember most from this meet.

“We had so many best times, and that’s all you can ask for,” Eckstein said.

Clark, picking up the thought, added, “We had a great day. Everybody swam hard. We had fun, and that’s what we’ll remember.”

ST. AL’S STATE CHAMPIONS
Girls
Adrienne Eckstein – 50-yard backstroke, 50 freestyle
Ann Elizabeth Farthing – 50-yard breaststroke, 50 butterfly
Leah Larson – 50-yard butterfly
200 medley relay – Adrienne Eckstein, Ann Elizabeth Farthing, Samantha Graves, Chandler Tucker
Boys
Adam Eckstein – 50-yard backstroke