Swimming is not always thought of as a momentum sport, but get off to a good start, and you're tough to beat. That's exactly what the Sehome 200 medley relay team did in the first race on Saturday, Feb. 18, at the Class 2A Boys' Swimming State Championships, as they claimed the event title in 1 minute, 39.90 seconds.

In the process, the quartet of Cole Avery, Patrick Gregory, Andy Small and Allen Cui set the stage for Sehome to go on an win a fourth straight team title.

"I think it really got everybody excited," Small said. "We knew we could do got, and everybody pulled off a fast time. We all went out and swam some amazing splits, and it got everybody so pumped up to go swim good times in their events."

Avery, a freshman who would win the 100 backstroke final later in the evening, led off the event by posting the fastest 50-yard backstroke split (25.25 seconds) by 11/2 seconds to set the stage for Gregory, Small and Cui to bring home the event championship by almost 41/2 seconds over second-place North Thurston.

"When Cole went out and swam a great backstroke leg, we all knew we just wanted to keep building on it," Cui said.

Gregory, who would later win the 100 breaststroke title, followed Avery's effort by swimming the fastest breaststroke leg (27.08 seconds) in the field by nearly a half second, before Small turned in the quickest butterfly (24.61 seconds).

That gave Sehome such a large lead that Cui could cruise to the title.

"I think everybody had a great race in that one," Gregory said. "Cole swam an amazing 50 backstroke split, Andy's split in the butterfly was terrific, and Allen swam another great leg. It's great when everybody comes up big like that ."

Especially considering Sehome made a late-season change to the relay in an effort to boost the 200 freestyle relay lineup.

"We moved Andy into the medley relay so that we could shore up the 200 freestyle by moving Casey (Klipsch) there," Sehome coach Don Helling said. "We saw that Archbishop Murphy was going to try to make a run at us in the 200 and 400 freestyles, and we thought that would give us the best chance in those races, even though we knew we might be giving something up in the medley. Andy really stepped up his game for districts and swam an amazing split for us today, and that was great to see."

200 INDIVIDUAL MEDLEY

Avery knew coming into the 200 individual medley that the swimmer he had to watch most was Pullman's Christopher Li.

In fact, Avery said Helling repeatedly reminded him to "watch out for the breaststroker" before the race.

Helling didn't tell Avery which breaststroker to watch out for, because it turns out the best one in the pool was none other than Avery, himself.

Not surprisingly, Avery swam the fastest backstroke split (28.07 seconds), beating Li and the rest of the field by nearly 11/2 seconds in the event's second leg. But then Avery turned right around and swam the fastest breaststroke (34.22 seconds) in the field, as well.

"Cole swam amazingly well," Helling said. "You look at how he swam in the middle two strokes - the ones that usually determine the IM - and he swam them great. It's no wonder he won."

Avery ended up claiming the state title in 1:55.87, nearly five seconds faster than Li.

"It was pretty amazing to win," Avery said. "I've been in some pretty big meets before, but to win here, it was something I'll never forget."

200 FREESTYLE RELAY

Gregory said he knew he had his work cut out from him swimming the leadoff leg for Sehome's 200 freestyle relay team.

"Leading up to the race, I looked and saw that North Thurston made a change and put their fastest guy swimming leadoff," Gregory said. "I knew I had to swim as fast as I possibly could to help keep our team in it."

Gregory did that, as his 22.27-second split was the only leadoff time in the sub-23-second range and gave the relay teammates Isaiah Grambo, Cui and Klipsch the advantage they needed to not only win their second relay title of the night, but also break Pullman's year-old meet record in the event by nearly a second with their winning time of 1:29.31.

"After Patrick got us off to the good start, we all just tried to do our part," said Grambo, a freshman. "We all knew we just had to swim the fastest we could."

Nobody swam faster than senior Casey Klipsch, who turned in the only sub-22 split in the entire race, as he brought home the title with a blazing 21.61-second split.

"We knew Archbishop Murphy was coming after us in the 200 and 400 freestyles (relays)," Klipsch said. "We were the top seed, and everybody was shooting for us. Our goal was to just have everybody swim their best split and that's exactly what we got. All four guys really stepped up, I thought."

100 BACKSTROKE

After winning his first individual title in the 200 individual medley, it didn't take Avery long to get his second. Only seven events later, the freshman was back in the pool taking aim at yet another title in the 100 backstroke.

"I was really happy with my (backstroke) leg in the 200 medley (relay)," Avery said. "I thought I swam a great split in that, so my goal coming into the backstroke was to try to swim the same split for the first 50 yards."

Avery nearly did just that, as he swam nearly a second faster than anybody else in the field, turning in a split of 25.45 - just two tenths of a second off his relay split. He followed the race's fastest split by swimming the third-fastest 50 split of anybody in the field (26.78 seconds).

"Cole just took over that race," Helling said. "He got out front, and nobody was there. He swims that event at such a faster tempo than anyone else, and he gets in an out of the wall faster than anyone else. He just has a great feel for the backstroke."

Not only was his winning time of 52.23 seconds nearly two seconds faster than second-place Joel Watts of Cheney, it was two hundredths of a second faster than the meet record set by Sehome alum Austin Fish one year earlier - a record Helling said he thought "would stand for quite a while."

"That's pretty special," Avery said. "I know Austin, and I'm pretty sure if he were to get in the pool with me tomorrow, he'd probably beat me. But to break a record of his when I'm only a freshman, I was pretty happy with that."

100 BREASTSTROKE

Three-tenths of a second was all that separated Gregory from rival Gus Evans of Squalicum and the 100 breaststroke state title in 2011.

Gregory had a whole year to play that three-tenths of a second over and over in his mind.

On Saturday, he made sure there wouldn't be a repeat performance, as he turned in a time of 58.69 seconds in the final to beat Evans's time of 59.27 seconds and claim the state title. Sumner senior Connor Powers-Hubbard was the only other swimmer under 1:01.

"I've been waiting for this for three years now," said Gregory, now a junior. "When I looked up and saw I had won, it was so amazing."

It was even more amazing when Gregory realized he had broken the two-year-old meet record of Fish, who was a former teammate of Gregory's. Fish swam a 59.21 in 2010.

"It was so great to see Patrick come through like that," Helling said. "Physically, he's been working really hard, and he's got such short-burst speed and a good stroke, but this is the first race where he's really put it all together."

Now he'll have to put it together again, as it's now Evans - also a junior - who has another year to think about Saturday's race and a potential rubber match with Gregory next year at state.