TJ Senior – A State Champion
by Michael Mankoff
photo by Kevin Fleming
About the same time the Thomas Jefferson High School baseball team was letting the possibility of being state champions slip through their fingers, Senior Swimmer Marc Houghton was taking his position on the blocks in the final race of the Class 4A 200 freestyle. Not only would this be the last time Houghton would swim for his high school, but it would be for a state title, and a chance to be inscribed into the book of state champions for life.
"I was pretty confident in myself before the race," said Houghton. "I knew I worked as hard as I could to train for this event." His hard work and training for the last four years finally paid off exactly one minute and forty-two seconds after the gunshot had sounded, when Houghton touched the wall almost a full second before his closest competitor. "It felt amazing," exclaimed Houghton when asked of his emotions once he finished the race. "It was also a big relief, since I was seeded first in the 200 freestyle going into finals," he added. With his time of 1:42.80, Houghton made the automatic All-American cut, which was one of his goals coming into the meet.
Conifer swimmer Christian Treat was the second-place finisher in the event and had been Houghton’s closest competition all season. "He (Treat) was the guy who beat me last year at state. I knew I had to work extra hard if I wanted to take the event this year," noted State Champion Houghton. After preliminaries, Houghton admitted he was somewhat nervous going into the final day. His nerves subsided as the 3:30pm race time neared. He knew how Treat would swim the race and that proved to be a big advantage. "He swims the first hundred really fast," said Houghton, "but I was aggressive and stayed ahead of him the whole race."
As a team, the Spartans finished 17th with a total of 37 points. While Houghton alone accumulated all of those points, the rest of the members did an extraordinary job. Both the 200 freestyle relay (Seth Perry, Ryan Diaz, Tate Sheiman, and Houghton) and 400 freestyle relay (Daniel Smith, Tim Mahoney, Sheiman and Houghton) teams had their best times ever, and Seth Perry swam his personal best time in the 100 butterfly. Head coach Cindy Allen noted, "I was really happy with the entire team. Excluding Marc, this was the first state meet for all the swimmers."
This is the first state title for a TJ swimmer since 1981, 27 years ago, when George DiCarlo won two gold medals at the state meet. DiCarlo later went on to become an Olympic Gold medalist at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles swimming the 400 freestyle.
Houghton also is the most recent swimmer to qualify for state all four years of his high school career. His sister, and former TJ girls’ swimmer Lauren Houghton was the last person to accomplish this feat qualifying from 2000-2004. Marc Houghton’s legacy will most certainly live on at Thomas Jefferson High School as one of the best the school has ever seen.
