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Swimmer Johnson shoots for state meet By GREG STILES Now that Ashley Johnson has settled on her swimming priorities, she's making up for lost time -- or at least improving her time. The South Medford junior has been caught in the long-standing swimmer's quandary of choosing between big high school meets or U.S. Swimming age-group meets. Johnson The past two winters, Johnson's training was aimed for age-group meets. This season, she's hoping to make the 100-yard butterfly finals at the Feb. 18-19 Class 4A high school state meet in Gresham. "I'm more focused on the high school state meet this year, mainly because of the college coaches," Johnson says. "That's where the coaches are going to be." Johnson qualified for last year's state meet, but didn't make it past the preliminaries. She figures she could've done far better had that meet been her focus and isn't taking chances this time around. "I wasn't trained well enough for state and wasn't in position to do well," she says. "I looked at the situation and re-evaluated my training and decided to have my club coach (Superior Aquatics' Suha Tokman) taper me for the high school meet." Swimmers taper, or reduce their workouts, prior to big meets to save strength and peak for the meet. Johnson was among several local high school swimmers who skipped last week's three-way meet between North Medford, South Medford and Grants Pass to compete in the Oregon Seniors Championships at Multnomah Athletic Club in Portland. Johnson was third in the 200 butterfly (2:13.41), sixth in the 100 butterfly (1:01.53) and sixth in the 200 individual medley (2:16.75). She combined with Sarah Arant, Holly Roberts, Jamie Erickson and Kristen Heath to produce sixth-place finishes in the 200 freestyle and medley relays. The 200 butterfly was Johnson's best ever by more than two seconds, and she knocked off four seconds in the individual medley. The race she's aiming for next month, however, is the 100 butterfly -- the only butterfly distance in the Oregon School Activities Association meet. Her best time in the event is 1:00.78, registered early this season. "The 200 is easier for me, because I have better endurance," Johnson says. The endurance is easy to understand when you look at the distance Johnson and some of her SAC teammates cover through the year. "Ashley puts in incredible hours into this sport," Tokman says. "This year's program includes 1,983,000 yards for the short-course and long-course seasons. People think the kids get in and splash around for a while, but they swim their tails off. They're doing between 50,000 and 60,000 yards per week. They crawl into the locker room at the end of practice." For now, Johnson just hopes to erase the memory of a less-than-successful showing at last year's sate meet. "It seems the past couple of years that I've been doing really well at the beginning of the season but not gradually getting better, like most people do," Johnson says. "My goal is to make the finals and break a minute." Still, Johnson's work won't be at an end. She is qualified for six events in the Senior Regional March 2-5 at Boise, Idaho. But that will be without the benefit of tapering. "You can taper twice -- once for the long-course (metric) season and once for the short-course season," Tokman says. "You can hold a taper for two weeks, but after that, you're pretty much dead." The 16-year-old Johnson began swimming competitively nine years ago and has trained under Tokman five years. "She has always been above medium, but in the last year or so her butterfly really showed improvement," Tokman says. "She had a huge goal of making the Western Zone team for Oregon and finally made it last year." Swimming against the best from 12 states, she more than held her own with a handful of fourths and fifths. Adam Foley was sixth in the 1,000 freestyle (10:43.93) at the senior state meet. Foley, Ryan Rackly, William Adrian and Peter Thornhill placed third in the 400 medley relay, fourth in the 200 medley relay, fifth in the 200 freestyle relay and sixth in the 400 freestyle relay. Superior Aquatics placed seventh out of 72 teams at Multnomah Athletic Club. Superior swimmers were busy at two other meets as well last weekend. Superior took first in the 12-team Willamalane Aquatics Invitational at Eugene. Elise Boldt, Jesse Bright, Jamie Buckley, Hillary Burelle, Susie Eastman, Krystle Haugen, Kayla Haugen, Liz Henderson, Ann Henderson, Brittany Miller, Jason Slowey, Olivia Tylutki, Maggie Morefield and Lexi Brown were all multiple winners in the three-day meet. At Seattle, 12-year-old Travis Bishop placed in four events at the Winter West Coast All-Star Meet at the King Country Aquatics Center. Bishop was fourth in the 50 freestyle (26.93), fifth in the 200 freestyle (2:05.53), eighth in the 100 freestyle (57.25) and 12th in the 500 freestyle (5:43.08). Dairian Wallis, 11, was eighth in the 50 freestyle (27.93), 15th in the 500 freestyle (5:46.00) and 16th in the 100 freestyle (1:00.39). Today's Edition : News | Sports | Business | Weather | Tempo | Classifieds Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA