THORNTON — “Lightning fast” hardly begins to describe the type of speed that inhabited the lanes of the Veterans Memorial Aquatics Center on Saturday afternoon, but DK Nakashima made his presence known in a room full of some of Class 5A’s heaviest hitters.
In the 200-yard individual medley, Legacy’s leading man sped to the top of the scoreboard, clocking in at 1 minute, 54.19 seconds to claim his one and only gold in the Coaches Invite. In doing so, he mastered a personal record.
“At first, I thought I was looking at the wrong lane, but then I looked and I remembered I was in lane six,” he said. “I felt pretty happy. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”
He said he dropped 0.8 seconds off of his club time and an estimated 3.5 off of his previous-best high school mark. Later on, he helped pace his 200-yard freestyle relay quartet to sixth place (1:30.30) and took home the bronze in the 100-yard breaststroke (58.03 seconds).
“I think it’s a good benchmark, considering this is a pretty big meet,” Nakashima said. “I think it’s like the halfway mark for state, so it’s a good view marker.”
Fairview’s Wesley Schlachter, likewise, felt the rush of excitement when he won his 200 free event with a 1:42.85, then padded his resume with a close-second finish in the 500 free (4:43.75), trailing the winner — Smoky Hill’s Ian Noffsinger — by less than a second.
Smoky Hill finished third in the team race with 613.5 points, trailing behind first-place Regis Jesuit (874). Only Legacy cracked into the top 10 among local teams with 248 points.
Schlachter attributed his success to his coaches, and enjoyed personal records in both the prelims and finals for his 200 free.
“Obviously, it’s pretty early in the season still, but it was still fun to kind of win at an invite like this and just get that confidence going for the bigger meets coming up,” he said. “It’s the hard practices that you don’t want to do but you know you have to do them, just keep going faster and faster. I hate them in the moment, but then when you think about the effects, they definitely pay off. They definitely seem like they’re all worth it in the end.”
Broomfield’s Rhys Gibson joined the local list of championship-heat finalists, though it was small, by qualifying for the coveted final heat in the 100-yard backstroke. He finished 10th in the event, recording a time of 55.42 seconds, but took pride in getting there in the first place. He helped propel the Eagles to a team victory among the few 4A teams in attendance.
The Aurora-area schools dominated basically everything else.
“You’ll do good in one race and then not so good in another race, simply because of how the layout works,” Gibson said. “It’s pretty tough because it’s pretty fast, and then there’s two sessions. There’s two hours in between, so you get basically no rest in between. And it’s a good benchmark, because you’re suited up with like a tiny bit of a taper, so it’s good to see where you are in the season on a fair level.”
