THE DALLES — The Dalles High School boys swimming team was sixth and the girls 16th at the 2026 Class 4A/3A/2A/1A state championship meet Feb. 20-21 at Tualatin Hills Aquatic Center in Beaverton.
The Riverhawk boys scored 16 points, two behind fifth-place Philomath; Newport won both the boys and girls team championships.
The Dalles was led by its third-place 200-yard freestyle relay and its fourth-place 400-yard freestyle relay. Rhett Loughmiller, Maverick Varland, Sawyer Dray, and Everest Lenardson swam in both events. The Riverhawk foursome, anchored by Lenardson’s 23.39 final leg, was timed in 1 minute, 36.49 seconds in the final. They swam the longer relay in 3:26.63.
Lenardson clocked a six-second improvement in the 200-yard individual medley over his district time — 2:10.82 to 2:16.42 — and placed seventh in the race at state. He missed making the final by a second.
Loughmiller placed sixth in the 100-yard freestyle, improving a second from his seed time. He was fifth in the prelim in the race at 1:56.12 and swam 1:55.89 a day later despite dropping a place. Loughmiller was sixth in the 100-yard backstroke in 1:02.37 after clocking 1:02.23 in the preliminaries. Lenardson was seventh in the 100-yard freestyle in 51.94 and Dray was 10th (54.15). Dray also placed 11th in the 50-yard freestyle.
The Dalles girls were led by its fifth-place 200-yard freestyle relay of Kaiya Doty, Riley Elliott, Laura Black, and Lillen Vaught. They swam the event in 1:47.76, as Vaught closed hard on Corbett’s anchor with her 26.02 split. Corbett touched first at 1:47.75 and third place Tillamook was at 1:47.26. The Riverhawk team improved its seed time by two seconds.
The same group, albeit in a different order, finished seventh in the preliminaries in the 400-yard freestyle in 4:08.13 — also a two-second improvement on its district meet finish.
Doty, a junior, was seventh in the 200-yard individual medley in 2:29.34, two seconds faster than she swam at district two weeks ago to qualify for state. Black, a senior, was 13th in the 50-yard freestyle preliminaries in 27.24. Vaught, a junior, dropped her seed time at state, finishing the 100-yard freestyle in 59.07, which was seventh in the preliminary round.
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