“Jeff Christensen closed out his Spartan swimming career by breaking the school record in the 100-yard butterfly.His new mark led Bainbridge to 72 points and an 11th place finish in the 3A Washington State Swimming and Diving Championships Friday and Saturday at the King County Aquatic Center. The overall finish is the best since the 1996 team placed fifth. Christensen’s 53.29 in the finals broke Sean Cooper’s five-year old record of 53.71 and was good for sixth place. Christensen was also seventh in the 50 free and swam leadoff legs on two relays that placed first and second in the consolation finals.Freshman Zander Burmer added another dozen points with his seventh place in diving and senior Andrew Sperling was sixth in the consolation finals in the 100 free.I’ve always thought about the school record, Christensen said. And I knew if I dropped as much time this year as I did last year I could get it.Reminded that his times during the season hadn’t hinted at such a precipitous drop, he replied that when you work as hard as we did during the season you really can’t get good times. You get caught up in dual meets and practices.But after the league meet, there’s open time to concentrate on technique and fine tuning. It was a combination of motivation, rest, the pool and the competition. It makes it all come together.A week before state, he said that the school record was a long shot.But he moved much closer to the target in Friday’s prelims with a 53.85.I actually didn’t think I had it in me to go that fast in prelims, he said. But the competition makes you go faster.Christensen actually swam faster in the prelims in the 50 free than he did in the finals, clocking a lifetime best 22.28 on Friday.I was six hundredths slower in the finals, but I held my place (based on the prelims), he said. I didn’t get the greatest start. It seemed like we were being held longer.After the eight preliminary dives, Burmer was seventh. He dropped a notch to eighth after the evening’s first two final dives, but had his third-highest score of the competition on his final dive to regain his previous position and finish with a score of 317.80.His coach, Danielle Makis, said Burmer’s performance was awesome for a freshman. It wasn’t his best performance, but he was nervous before the meet.Burmer agreed.My dives weren’t always my best, he said, but my goal was to make the finals. I did that so I’m glad.With four seniors among the six who finished ahead of him, Burmer stands to move up significantly next year.That should be true especially if he can continue to train with Makis, a former Spartan diver and currently a sophomore at Seattle Central CC who never advanced to state. But she began training age-group divers with longtime dive coach Chris Miller and volunteered to work with Burmer this season.Sperling, the Spartans’ other individual qualifier, swam a lifetime best 50.32 in his sixth-place finish in the 100 free consolation finals.Bainbridge led wire-to-wire in winning the 400-yard relay in consolation finals. Christensen splashed to a 49.92 opening leg, tying the lifetime best for 100 yards he’d set the day before in qualifying. Jacob Whitmore opened up open water with a 50.72 second leg, and Erik Steinecker added to the lead with a 52.18 third leg. Eastmont made a late run as their anchor swimmer pulled up almost even with Sperling. But the senior turned on the jets in the final 25 yards to win going away with a 50.07 anchor 100 and put an emphatic exclamation mark on the relay, the meet and the season. The 200 free relay of Christensen, Steinecker, Nick Rodda and Sperling was second in 1:32.55, with Sperling swimming an anchor leg of 22.92 to nearly pull out the win as he gained with every stroke.Jacob Whitmore (lifetime best 5:09.75) and Tristan Stringer (5:26.18) were eliminated in the 500 free prelims.So was the 200 yard medley relay team of Jake Christensen, Lars Lagerloef, Nick Rodda and Nate Rooks, which clocked 1:51.38.Characteristically, coach Lynn Wells gave much of the credit to the team’s performance to assistant coach Greg Colby.The taper during the last two weeks was so important. I put Colby in charge of designing it because he has more experience, she said. And the guys’ performance during the second day was proof positive of how well it worked.Jacob Whitmore swam a 50-second leg in the (4×100 yard) relay and that dropped nearly five seconds off his 100 freestyle time in a month. That really pumped up the freshmen and sophomores. Wells is counting on that enthusiasm to continue.It’s sad to see the seniors go, she said, but I’m looking forward to next year with a group of kids who are motivated because of what they saw and did here. “