By Pierre LaBossiere
Peninsula Daily News
TACOMA — Port Angeles’ Cassandra Middlestead finished 30th all-around in the state in the State Gymnastics 1A/2A/3A Championships held at the Tacoma Dome Exhibition Hall.
There were 137 competitors at the 1A/2A/3A meet. Middlestead, a finalist last year in the beam (finishing ninth), got a 16th place in the beam this year with a score of 8.775 to qualify for the finals. In the finals, she finished 17th with an 8.175.
Middlestead also picked up a 33rd place in the bars at 7.550, 63rd in the vault at 8.050 and 82nd in the floor exercise at 7.650. She ended up with 32.025 points overall.
Port Angeles and Sequim had individuals at the state meet, but not full teams, so neither school had team results.
A total of five Port Angeles and Sequim gymnasts competed at state, held Thursday and Friday. Lesae Pfeffer of Sequim picked up a 68th place in the beam (7.325) and an 83rd in the vault (7.750). She finished 91st overall thanks to these two events.
Julienne Jacobs of Port Angeles was 74th in the floor at 8.075, while teammate Maizie Tucker was 73rd in the vault (7.950) and 86th in the bars (7.950).
Port Angeles’ Cassidy Tamburro was 86th in the bars at 5.225.
Boys Swimming State Preliminaries
FEDERAL WAY — After the first day of preliminaries at the 2A State Swim and Dive Championships, three divers from the North Olympic Peninsula are all in the position to place in the top 10.
After the diving semifinals Friday night, Sequim’s Mathew Craig sits in sixth place with 208.75 points. The leader is Nic Malinowski of Steilacoom with 249.95 points.
Andrew Methner of Port Angeles is 10th at 191.30 points, while Crescent’s Micah Scott is 11th at 189.30 points.
After the first round of diving earlier in the day, Craig was third at 152.15 points, while Scott was ninth at 132.35 and Methner 11th at 119.30.
The finals of the diving competition took place Saturday night after press deadline.
Among the swimmers, Port Angeles’ Cameron Butler moved on to the finals in two events. Butler finished 11th in the preliminaries Friday in the 200-yard individual medley with a time of 2 minutes, 5.83 seconds, bettering his qualifying time of 2:07.02.
Butler finished 12th in the 500-yard freestyle in a time of 5:01.80, bettering his qualifying time of 5:05.44. Butler will swim in the “B” finals of both events, which includes the ninth- through 16-place finishers from the preliminaries.
The Sequim 200-yard freestyle team of Jax Thaxton, Deven Biehler, Kaleb Needoba and Alex Berikoff just barely missed out on moving on to the finals. They finished 17th in a time of 1:40.38, less than two seconds out of the 16th-place time of 1:38.69.
Though they didn’t qualify for the finals, the Port Angeles and Sequim 400-yard freestyle relay teams had quite a duel in the prelims. The Port Angeles team of Taylor Martin, Henry Shaw, Alex Hertzog and Butler finished 19th with a time of 3:43.93, bettering their qualifying time (3:49.59) by a big margin. The Sequim team of Thaxton, Murray Bingham, Keedoba and Berikoff finished 21st with a time of 3:44.62, less than a second behind Port Angeles. The Sequim team bettered its qualifying time of 3:47.56.
Port Angeles and Sequim gymnasts at the Class 1A/2A/3A WIAA State Gymnastics Championships were Aiesha LaTourette, state competitors Cassidy Tamburro, Maizie Tucker, Lesae Pfeffer Julienne Jacobs and Cassandra Middlestead, and Devon Scribner.
