AURORA | City teams and athletes won a combined four team state championships and 12 individual state championships in the final weeks of the 2016 spring prep sports season. Here’s a look at one of Aurora’s individual state winners, Class 5A boys swimming 100 yard breaststroke state champion Elijah Warren, a Regis Jesuit sophomore:
Courtney Oakes is Aurora Sentinel Sports Editor. Reach him at 303-750-7555 or sports@aurorasentinel.com. Twitter: @aurorasports. FB: Aurora Prep Sentinel
REGIS JESUIT’S ELIJAH WARREN: 5A BOYS SWIMMING 100 YARD BREASTSTROKE STATE CHAMPION
Several events after helping Regis Jesuit’s 200 yard medley relay win the Class 5A state championship with his leg of the breaststroke, sophomore Elijah Warren went on to dominate the 100 yard breaststroke, an event he’d led the state in for most of the season. In another strong result in coach Nick Frasersmith’s team’s push to finish second in the 5A team standings in the finals May 21 at the United States Air Force Academy, Warren touched the wall in a winning time of 54.82 seconds that brought him in easily below the Automatic All-American standard of 56.40 seconds. He came into the state meet with a seed time of 56.89 seconds he’d held for most of the season (established at a dual meet on April 5 at Arapahoe) and came in brimming with confidence as he continued to refine his technique. Warren swam significantly faster in the state prelims with a time of 55.14 seconds, then knocked another 0.32 off in the finals to capture the state title by more than two seconds. Battling through the altitude of 7,258-plus feet location of the Cadet Natatorium, he finished just shy of the existing 5A and Colorado state meet record of 54.68 seconds set by Loveland’s Nick Hatanaka in 2013 and he gave Regis Jesuit its second 100 breaststroke state champion in the past three seasons, following Quinlan Stuart in 2014. Warren also finished third in the 200 individual medley and swam on the sixth-place 400 freestyle relay.