COLUMBUS — Mount Vernon Yellow Jackets swimmer Johnson Cochran propelled himself to a berth in the State Swimming and Diving Championships with his best performance ever in the 100-yard breaststroke in Saturday’s OHSAA District Championships, held at the McCorkle Aquatic Pavillion at Ohio State University.
Cochran cracked the minute barrier, turning in a time of 59.57 seconds. Cochran shaved nearly a full second off the time he posted at last week’s Sectionals.
“We’ve been cutting down (practice) yardage as a way of sort of gliding ourselves into a finale at Districts,” said Cochran, a junior, who was in second place at the split with a 27.52. “We had a lot of people go this year and the atmosphere was really cool.”
Cochran also broke a minute in the 100-yard butterfly posting a 59-flat — good for 27th place.
“Johnson is just an interesting kid,” said Mount Vernon coach Matt Maley. “He’s just very focused and you wont see him outwardly excited. It all just sort of bursts out of him after he’s done with a race. His focus is what helped him really push forward.”
The top performance for the Yellow Jacket girls was a team effort by senior Caroline Caldwell and junior Emily Miglin, who combined with a pair of freshmen to place 15th in the 200-yard freestyle relay. The two upperclassmen along with Sierra Silverwood and Sage Devlin completed the relay in 1:49.34.
Gavin Rundell was 12th for the boys in the 200 freestyle (1:49.85) and 18th in the 500 freestyle (5:04.88) shaving several seconds off of his sectional times in both races.
