Ashley Wallace and Sarah Bartlett did not expect much Friday night when they showed up at the Fidalgo Pool in Anacortes as the only two members of the South Whidbey High School girls swim team.

After swimming as part of Mariner High School’s squad all season, Wallace and Bartlett had to go it alone against 10 big-school teams at Friday’s Northwest District meet. With only a few years of swimming experience between them and after a season of abbreviated practices, the meet might have been a disappointment.

It wasn’t. The two Falcon seniors swam their best races of the year at the meet and showed their coach, Amy Dixon, all the early morning drives to practice at Mariner this fall were worth it.

“They’re both talented,” Dixon said.

Swimming two events each at the meet, Wallace and Bartlett were just hoping to shave a few tenths of a second off their best freestyle and butterfly times. Apparently they were in better shape than they thought. In the 100-yard freestyle, Wallace improved by more than a second to 1:08.25 and placed 16th. Bartlett got even more out of her stroke in the 100-yard butterfly, slicing four seconds for a time of 1:20.68. She also qualified for a consolation finals race Saturday.

“I did better than I thought I would,” Bartlett said.

Trouble with her goggles during the consolation race drew her a disqualification. Dixon said Bartlett probably would have placed 11th overall had that not happened.

The girls also had strong races earlier in the meet. Bartlett was about a finger’s-length faster at the end of her 50-yard freestyle race with a time of 30.02 seconds, while Wallace came close to her best pace of the season in the 200 free with a 2:36.05 time.

This was the second year Wallace and Bartlett spent training under Dixon. After being part of a five-girl Falcon contingent last year, the pair worked even harder this season as their numbers dropped to two. Nonetheless, Dixon said, the points the South Whidbey girls scored while swimming as part of the Mariner team were the difference in the three meet wins the squad had this year.

“We wouldn’t have won any meets without those two,” she said.

The Falcon girls did not score any points as a team at the district meet, where they competed against 10 3A schools.

Both girls have swimming in their future. Wallace said she and Bartlett plan to attend Central Washington University together next year and compete on the school’s womens swim team.