It’s difficult to imagine any Tucson team, any in any sport, at any time, having a trio as dominant as the Badgers’ Bari Weick, Eric Finical and Bill Longton were in '79.
Greg Hansen The surest sign that Tucson High would become a superpower in high school swimming in 1979 was that the Badgers won the 1978 state championship, winning six individual events, all in state or city record times.
They were so productive that THS beat Phoenix Brophy Prep in the state finals; Brophy would then go on to win 39 consecutive state championships through 2019. The Badgers’ rise to swimming prominence wasn’t happenstance. Wandrey was an All-WAC swimmer at Arizona in the late 1960s and took over a declining THS swimming program that had won state titles in 1959 and 1961 but had since been unable to challenge new Phoenix suburban high schools like Mesa Westwood, Camelback and Washington.
Weick accepted a scholarship from Stanford, and also became an All-American and prominent distance-swimmer long after his college career. Longton chose to stay home and swim for Arizona, where he became a team captain as the UA began its rise to national prominence in the 1980s.Jerry Hernandez, son of 1961 Arizona all-conference running back"Jackrabbit" Joe Hernandez, set a city record in the backstroke.
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