The Evans brothers continue to make a big splash for the Fountain Hills High School swim team.

Freshman Kaiya Evans and junior Avery Evans swam in their first large invitational meet Saturday, Sept. 23. They joined seniors Keian Evans and Brendan Davies in automatically qualifying for the state championships in the 200m medley relay.

The four boys placed second in the Green and Gold Invitational (1:47.86) and beat the automatic qualifying time (1:48.90). Swimmers can only qualify for the state meet at sanctioned invitationals, and the Falcons will have three more invitationals before the championships in November.

The 200m boys medley relay team came within tenths of a second from a school record set in a sixth-place finish at the state championships last year (1:47.64). Keian and Davies have both improved since being part of the record-setting relay team, and they have their sights set on a top five finish or better this year.

Davies swam his closing leg of the relay race a second and a half faster than he did in a tri-meet just two days before the invitational, and he credits the invitational’s atmosphere.

“I think I kind of anticipated I would do better just because state meets, it’s like a completely different environment than a regular meet,” Davies said. “You’re a lot more hyped up. There’s a lot more adrenaline. I think I anticipated I would do better, but not by this much.”

The Falcons have a week until the next invitational Saturday, Sept. 30, but then they won’t swim in another invitational until Saturday, Oct. 21, and Wednesday, Oct. 25.

“We’re kind of swimming tired right now, which is the goal,” head coach Patti Schultz said. “And if we’re swimming this fast tired, then we’re going to be better off once we get to the end of the season.”

Keian finished second in the 200m individual medley (2:03.10) and automatically qualified for state. Kaiya placed fifth in the 200m IM (2:11.93), and provisionally qualified. Avery took home fourth in the 200m freestyle (2:01.93), and sophomore Natalie Owers placed seventh in the 200m free (2:11.83), and both provisionally qualified for state.

Davies came in 10th in the 50m free (27.11) and is less than two seconds from qualifying for state. Junior Jacob Sommerschield placed 18th and also finished under 30 seconds (28.37), and senior Elizabeth Franzone placed 16th (31.80).

Five other Falcons swam in their first invitational meet, four of them being freshmen. Freshmen James Fessenden (30.44), Jack Stumpf (30.91), Ellie Vickers (34.96) and Katherine Kolesnikov (40.29) all swam the 50m free, as well as junior Shania Rivera (44.43).

“It’s nice to see a lot of new people coming in,” Davies said. “I know a lot of the freshmen have already dropped a ton of time since the first meet, so they’re all making a lot of progress. That’s really good to see. Hopefully, we’ll keep getting more and more people coming in.”

Schultz said the Falcons will fine tune things and rest ahead of their final two invitational meets. The Falcons will face Independence Thursday, Oct. 5, and have a tri-meet with Shadow Mountain and Mountain Pointe Thursday, Oct. 19

“All those little things make huge differences with time,” Schultz said. “We’ve got great momentum. I’m super excited about where we’re at.”