Mountain View swim coach Wietse Wullink recently had the program’s record board behind the blocks at the Mountain View Aquatic Center updated with new marks set by the boys team last spring and the girls team several weeks ago.
A month into the 2026 boys season, it is already outdated.
The Mountain Lions broke a pair of school relay records, including one that had stood for 11 years, en route to a second-place finish at their home April Fools Invite on Saturday.
Windsor won the meet with 565 points. Mountain View finished second with 447. Loveland was sixth with 206 and Thompson Valley was seventh with 88.
Mountain View opened the meet by finishing second in the 200-yard medley relay in a school-record time of 1 minute, 39.01 seconds. The foursome of Kane Willis, Owen Kolowski, Zac Chang and JJ Phillips replaced the record the relay set last year (1:40.11).
The Mountain Lions closed the meet with another record, one they had been chasing for some time. The foursome of Willis, Phillips, Cooper Farland and Nathan Dicks won the 400 freestyle relay in 3:22.52, replacing the old record of 3:23.67 that had stood since 2015.
“We’ve had it coming for a while now and on Thursday, at our last meet, we were all kind of winded and tired,” Dicks said. “But I think today, that was our focus to get that record.”
Mountain View got multiple state meet cuts on the day and several top finishes against some of the teams in their conference.
Phillips took first in the 200 freestyle (1:50.74) and second in the 50 freestyle (21.66), the latter just behind Rocky Mountain’s Sam Lofstrom’s 21.55.
The 200 freestyle was the only individual event the Mountain Lions won, but they had several other swimmers finish in the top six of their events.
In the 50 freestyle, Willis was fourth in 23.12 and Farland was sixth in 23.19. Chang was fifth in the 100 butterfly in 57.73. Farland was second (51.27), Kolowski fourth (52.01) and Dicks fifth (52.12) in the 100 freestyle. Willis was third (54.94) and Jackson Willard fifth (59.82) in the 100 backstroke. Kolowski was fourth (1:06.86) and Justice Madonna sixth (1:08.35) in the 100 breaststroke.
The Mountain Lions also won the 200 freestyle relay. The foursome of Farland, Kolowski, Dicks and Sawyer Ingraham was first in 1:34.19.
“As a team, we’re doing really well,” Dicks said. “We’ve talked to the team, and we have a chance to win our conference. So, that’s kind of given us a lot of motivation to put our pedal to the metal and just work, work, work.”
Loveland had several top finishes as well, led by Alex Patricelli, a double-finalist at the 4A state meet last season.
Saturday’s meet was only his second of the season, and he finished third in the 50 freestyle behind Lofstrom and Phillips in 22.19. He also led off Loveland’s second-place 400 freestyle relay, which finished in 3:29.56.
Patricelli is enlisting in the Marine Corps and leaves June 1 for basic training. He has been filling out paperwork and going to meetings, which delayed his start to the season. He is excited to be back in the pool now, though.
“A lot of the meetings I have to do and paperwork really interfered with the swim season, and that kind of kept me out for a bit because I wanted to finish all that,” he said. “But now that I’m back from all the medical exams and stuff, I’m so happy to be back in the pool, throwing it down with the guys. I went some decent times today.”
In addition to finishing second in the 400 freestyle relay, the Red Wolves were fourth in the 200 medley relay (1:45.79) and sixth in the 200 freestyle relay (1:39.64).
Other individual highlights for the Red Wolves included Will Schneider, who was third in the 100 butterfly (57.11); Evan Phillips, who was third in the 100 freestyle (51.29); Calvin Lee, who was sixth in the 100 freestyle (52.42) and Brooks Rehnberg, who was sixth in the 500 freestyle (5:57.17).
Thompson Valley’s top individual finisher was Cooper Christensen, who was second in the 100 breaststroke in 1:03.33. Christensen is a returning state qualifier and, on a team with no seniors, one of the leaders of a young Eagles team.
He was also on Thompson Valley’s sixth-place 200 medley relay (1:52.92).
“It’s different from last year because we had multiple seniors,” Christensen said. “This year we have none. We had a junior last year that unfortunately quit this year. I feel like we had some good freshmen coming in. I would say our team is good. Our team is for sure progressing, especially the kids that are freshmen.”
Thompson Valley diver Nathaniel Chou finished third in the 11-dive format with a state qualifying score of 398.30.
