Garden City boys dominate in defending crown
When the Garden City High School boys’ swimming team won the 2023 Western Athletic Conference team championship, they did so by unseating their perennial rival in the sport, the Great Bend Panthers.
They also did so despite winning just three of the 11 events but had enough points from multiple finishes in each event to overtake the Panthers.
Then, second-year coach Dan Delgado said the Buffs had made their serious plans to battle for the WAC title after the team returned from the 2022-23 Christmas break.
Fast-forward to November 2023, and winter sports preseason practices began in the middle of the month.
It was something the boys talked about right from the beginning of the season,” said Delgado, who now has two WAC titles to his credit with the Buffs.
This time, the Buffs won the team title by 99 points (it was 49 points in 2023) as they won seven of the 11 events at the Barton Community College pool on Feb. 8. The final tally was 553 to 454 with Hays coming in second.
“At some point we were assessing where each team member could best compete to give us the best opportunity to not only win, but to score as many points as we could,” Delgado related after the WAC championship. “I think they were highly motivated to do as well as they could.”
Indeed, the Buffs also secured the WAC Swimmer of the Year award, given annually to the swimmer who scores the most points. This year, it was senior Kaleb Reagle, who won both the 200- and 500-yard freestyle events while also swimming on the winning 200- and 400-yard freestyle relay teams.
One of the principal goals for the Buffs was to win all three relay races, and the big challenge in that was the 200-yard freestyle event where they had not beaten Hays all season.
After sweeping the opening 200-yard medley relay with the top two teams, the Buffs then midway through, toppled Hays’ 200-free relay team by two full seconds.
“It was the one that put us over the top for the rest of the meet,” said Delgado. “We were sitting pretty good at that point, but in sports you never assume anything. So, I just kept telling the boys to keep on swimming their best and giving their best effort.”
From the outset of the meet, the Buffs were on a roll, scoring in all 11 events, and scoring no less than 31 in any one of them. The breakdown was 212 points from the three relays and 341 points from the individual events.
In addition to Reagle’s double-gold effort, Brayden Sneath won the 100-yard freestyle and Alan Roman captured the 100-yard backstroke.
Great Bend garnered three individual titles with Kasey Kennedy winning two of those – the 200-yard individual medley and the 100-yard butterfly while Adam Hall took the 50-yard freestyle. Dodge City’s Inigo Muriel Lopez took gold in the 100-yard breaststroke.
More than anything, though, Delgado said the team’s depth was the key to winning the WAC.
“We’ve increased our team numbers in each of my three seasons,” Delgado said. “We’ve found a good number of our cross-country runners who can be good swimmers, too. They have become the biggest recruiters for the team.”
Delgado said his first year started with 20 and finished with 16 swimmers. In year two, it was 20 and 18 and this year it increased to 24 and 22.
“The key for us is retaining swimmers from one year to the next and get as many of the young kids out their freshman year so they can see what competitive swimming looks like,” Delgado said.
Delgado, a former cross-country coach at Garden City Community College, said he sees similarities in the training for both sports.
“I’ve always believed in what is called “press” workouts where you do both running and swimming,” Delgado said. “You practice them at a threshold right below race pace and do less yards but higher intensity.”
KALEB REAGLE, GARDEN CITY, SR.
2024 WAC SWIMMER OF THE YEAR
When he was a sophomore and began his high school swimming career, Kaleb Reagle didn’t know exactly how that would materialize two seasons later in his senior year.
The Garden City High School swimmer garnered WAC Swimmer of the Year honors for the boys’ conference by winning two individual events – the 200- and 500-yard freestyle and then was part of two winning relays (200- and 400-yard freestyles).
It capped off a solid prep career and put him in position where he now is considering offers from community colleges and NAIA schools, a decision he says he won’t make until later in the school year.
But winning WAC Swimmer of the Year was an unlikely path for Reagle. He said after his sophomore season when the team sent several swimmers to state, he lost focus during his junior campaign.
“I think I was just doing it more for fun and didn’t always put in the hardest workouts that I could have,” Reagle said. “I think this year I still could have worked harder, but I put in more time in the pool than in the past and over the last couple of weeks of the season I dropped my times.”
Reagle credited his teammates for the improvement in his senior season as several of them were in the mix for most points scored at the WAC championship.
“We pushed each other and maybe it made all of us a little better,” Reagle said. “To have it come down to our guys battling for the honor, it was pretty neat and honestly, I never really thought too much about it until sometime during the meet.”
In his junior season, Reagle was swimming different strokes, focusing on the backstroke before switching to freestyle only.
“I wanted to break two minutes in the 100, but I just missed it,” Reagle said of his winning time of 2:01.06. Teammate Ethan Unger was a distant second, nearly 12 seconds behind.
Despite winning the two individual events, Reagle said the highlight of the championship came when he and teammates Sneath, Dominic Mata and Josh Martinez clocked their fastest time of the year to that point (1:41.34) and beat Hays by two seconds.
“Seeing the time and that we had won was just the best thing,” Reagle said.
Reagle also said that Delgado allowed him and his teammates to have a lot of input as to what events everyone would swim.
“He let us choose a lot of the events we wanted, and I think that helped all of us be more a part of the team’s success,” Reagle said. “I didn’t switch to the 500 (free) until late in the year and just did that to help us get more points.”
Reagle plans to pursue an academic field of study in either business or kinesiology with the hope of owning his own business or perhaps even becoming a swim coach.
WAC Boys Swimming Championship
Thursday, Feb. 8, 2024 • Barton Community College, Great Bend
| SCHOOL | POINTS | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Garden City | 553 |
| 2 | Hays | 454 |
| 3 | Liberal | 336 |
| 4 | Great Bend | 324 |
| 5 | Dodge City | 254 |
All-Western Athletic Conference – 2024
First Team/Champions of Each Event
| EVENT | SWIMMER(S) | SCHOOL | TIME |
|---|---|---|---|
| 200-yard Medley Relay | Alan Roman Ethan Unger Josh Martinez Brayden Sneath | Garden City | 1:56:18 |
| 200-yard Freestyle | Kaleb Reagle | Garden City | 2:01:06 |
| 200-yard IM | Kasey Kennedy | Great Bend | 2:16:18 |
| 50-yard Freestyle | Adam Hall | Great Bend | 24.43 |
| 100-yard Butterfly | Kasey Kennedy | Great Bend | 59.00 |
| 100-yard Freestyle | Brayden Sneath | Garden City | 56.51 |
| 500-yard Freestyle | Kaleb Reagle | Garden City | 5:59:35 |
| 200-yard Freestyle Relay | Brayden Sneath Kaleb Reagle Dominic Mata Josh Martinez | Garden City | 1:41:34 |
| 100-yard Backstroke | Alan Roman | Garden City | 1:06:01 |
| 100-yard Breaststroke | Inigo Muriel Lopez | Dodge City | 1:14:01 |
| 400-yard Freestyle Relay | Kaleb Reagle Trevor Fry Dominic Mata Alan Roman | Garden City | 3:53:08 |
2024 WAC Coach of the Year—Kendra Clary, Hays
