3A girls swimming: Fullerton gives Liberty Common program’s first individual champion

THORNTON – After only three years with a girls swim and dive program, it didn’t long for Liberty Common to make its mark in Class 3A.

During the 3A state championships at Veterans Memorial Aquatics Center on Saturday, Liberty Common sophomore Elsa Fullerton entered the 200 freestyle finals seeded second but finished strong to win the event with a time of 1 minute, 54.23 seconds. Her victory was the Eagles’ first individual state title as a swim and dive program.

“It’s so exciting. I’m on top of the world,” Fullerton said. “That was such a close race, so I’m just ecstatic that I was able to finish long and hard at the very end. I had no idea how it was going to go. I was just going to swim my best and see what happens.”

Fullerton’s preliminary time of 1:56.38 was second best behind Denver North’s Tuva Siegel. But the Eagles sophomore, who took home a pair of top-six finishes at state last season, found an extra gear on the final lap of the race and narrowly edged out the Denver North junior by two hundredths of a second.

Coming into this year’s state meet, Liberty Common head coach Rob Huey said he knew Fullerton had a chance but that she would have to swim her best race to win. She did, and Huey, who was voted 3A Coach of the Year by the coaches, was thrilled to see his young program crown its first individual champion.

“This is our third year with a swim program, we’re a small charter school with about 350 total students,” Huey said. “I didn’t think we’d get a state champion this early. I coached 5A for quite a while and we decided to start up a team at the school where I teach. I just imagined a really small ‘learn to swim’ program for quite a while. We’ve blossomed really quickly over the first three years of our team.”