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.
The Badgers who won those six events β Bari Weick, Eric Finical and Bill Longton β were only juniors.
It wasnβt much of a surprise a year later when coach Jim Wandreyβs Badgers climbed to No. 2 in Swimming World magazineβs national rankings, trailing only a Mission Viejo, California, team that was essentially a collection of all-stars training for national and international competition.
Itβs difficult to imagine any Tucson team, any in any sport, at any time, having a trio as dominant as the Badgersβ Weick, Finical and Longton were in β79.
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 classic β79 state championship meet was staged at Phoenix Country Day School. After two days of competition, it all came down to the final event, the 4x100 relay. Brophy led by five points.
βThe pressure was on everyone,β Wandrey told the Star. βEveryone contributed to our victory.β
Tucson won 253-243; at the time, 253 points was a state record for one team. No Tucson team has since won the stateβs big-schools boys swimming championship.
The Badgersβ rise to swimming prominence wasnβt 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.
In fact, Palo Verde had become Tucsonβs swimming school of the period, winning consecutive state championships in 1963-65.
But Wandrey changed all that when Longton, Finical and Weick, all of whom lived in what today would be the Catalina Foothills school district, enrolled at THS, and, through Wandreyβs connections, worked out regularly with elite-level swimmers at the UAβs on-campus swimming facilities.
Some considered Finical the No. 2 overall swimming recruit in the country. He accepted a scholarship to Texas and became an All-American when the Longhorns won the 1983 NCAA championship.
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.
The Badgers had significant depth and talent on those state title teams of 1977, 1978 and 1979.
Jerry Hernandez, son of 1961 Arizona all-conference running back βJackrabbitβ Joe Hernandez, set a city record in the backstroke. Kyle Dickson, Steve Cresswell and Leon Pickens scored significant points in the state finals.
Pete Eckerstrom, who today is a judge in the Arizona Court of Appeals in Tucson, was also a vital member of Wandryβs championship teams.
Bari Weick in 1980.
βIn those days,β Eckerstrom says now, βArizonaβs swimming teams all competed in Class AAAA; no smaller schools had teams. So when you won a state title, individually or as a team, it was not in a particular division, it was the true state title.β
The Badger All-Americans β Finical, Weick and Longton β became as distinguished for academics as for swimming.
Finical graduated from Texas and then the Duke Medical School. He is now a doctor of radiology in North Carolina.
Longton is a physician at the Stanford Medical Center, specializing in anesthesia and pain management.
Weick is a mechanical engineer.
After the Badgers won the β79 title, Wandrey was asked about the chance of a four-peat. βThatβs next year,β he told the Star. βIβm still soaking this one in.β
Wandrey wasnβt a specialist. He helped THS football coach Bill Dawson coach the Badgers of the late 1970s and went on become the athletic director at Tucson High. He died of cancer in 2005.
