Peninsula’s Michalke ramps up for districts, eyes state meet appearance

When Peninsula High senior swimmer Chase Michalke finally broke the one-minute mark in the 100-yard butterfly at the Class 3A South Sound Conference championship meet in Olympia last weekend, one would think he must have felt overwhelming joy.

Turns out, he mostly felt relief.

“I’ve been stuck at a minute for two years,” Michalke said. “It drove me crazy.”

Michalke came in first in the event, clocking in at 59.98 seconds. It was a huge weight lifted off his shoulders.

“It’s like that ghost that you can’t get to,” said Peninsula coach Tim Messersmith.

Michalke got out of the gate fast.

“I told him, ‘You’ve got to do it all in the first 50,’ ” Messersmith said. “There’s no holding back. The race is a minute, so there’s no time to hold back. It’s a very technical race, these sprints. You can’t mess up the starts, the turns, the finishes. He hit all of that. All that stuff in the middle — he does fine. It’s all that technical stuff.”

The “technical stuff,” like a golfer’s short game, is generally where swimmers are able to shave off time. For Michalke, the key has been his technique on his turns.

“I’ve really started to utilize how I need to get off the wall,” Michalke said. “Before, I hit the wall and did some weird motions. It’s finally started to click for me.”

Michalke said he’s worked on keeping his head up and looking at the wall.

“You don’t want to glide in and you also don’t want to short stroke it,” Messersmith said. “When you hit it right at your lunge, you’re not coming into the wall. That’s something we’ve been working on the last three years. He tends to pull himself into the wall and up, which is just wasted time. There’s no sense of going farther into the wall, which makes your race longer than it should be.

“And then when you come up out of the water, it’s a slower turn. You hit it right at your lunge, so you’re right at water level, and your head and shoulders stay at that water level. It allows you to get off the wall.”

What hasn’t been an issue for Michalke is the actual sprinting, and the intensity he brings to competition.

“He’s a competitor,” Messersmith said. “He really knows how to race. … He just digs down deep. He’s got good finishing speed. That paid off in a lot races and made him win the league.”

Now that he’s made it under the one-minute mark, Messersmith challenged his senior.

“I went over to him after the race and said, ‘Welcome to the club. Now, you can never go back,’” Messersmith said.

Michalke will need to place in the top-six in the first day of the West Central District III tournament this weekend at Curtis High, and then in the top-four the second day to qualify for the state tournament. Michalke and backstroker Ethan Brown appear to be the team’s best shots to advance to state.

Michalke has never made it to state. He thinks this is the year.

“I’ve trained since sixth grade to make state,” Michalke said. “I’ve made districts ever year. I think I’m finally at the point where I’m ready to make state.”

This story was originally published February 1, 2018 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Peninsula’s Michalke ramps up for districts, eyes state meet appearance."