That was the case before this past Saturday, anyway, when both Tigers swim teams brought home region trophies from the Region 13 championship meet, which was held in Tooele.

The Ogden girls team had winners in seven of the 11 races and totaled 468 points, comfortably ahead of Morgan High’s 371 points.

The boys side had three first-place finishes, but good depth translated into dozens of additional high finishers and a 526-464 win over Morgan.

Both teams had several returners and several kids who were new to competitive swimming.

“Very, very excited, we put in — I mean, our team’s been building, we’ve been getting better over the years and having this championship to cap off the years of hard work is fantastic,” Ogden coach Andrea Sweet said in a phone interview Wednesday.

Sweet also praised the teams’ assistant coaches, parents and what she called a “fun” team culture as things that have helped Ogden this year.

Ogden’s girls team is quite young, Sweet said. Of the Tigers’ seven first-place finishes, there’s only one senior, she being Elly Carlton.

Carlton won the 100 backstroke and swam a leg on the first-place 200 freestyle relay and 200 medley relay teams.

“She’s one of the hardest-working swimmers on our team,” Sweet said about Carlton. “She’s got a quiet and calm confidence, and she’s very encouraging to the swimmers and herself.”

Junior Stella Hunter won the 50 freestyle in 25.98 seconds, 4.56 seconds ahead of teammate Erika Hains in second place.

Hunter also won the 100 freestyle in 59.39 seconds (4.16 seconds ahead of second), and also swam a leg on the first-place 200 medley relay and 200 freestyle relay teams.

Hunter’s time in the 50 freestyle is ranked third in the 3A classification, according to the Utah Swimming Coaches Association leaderboard.

Freshman Cyan Schatz won the 200 individual medley in 2:42.12, took second in the 500 freestyle and also swam on the aforementioned first-place relay teams.

The seventh first-place finish came in the 400 freestyle relay, where Kamryn Kennedy, Victoria Tague, Erika Hains and Berlin Bartlett edged Morgan’s team by 1.25 seconds to win the day’s final race.

Megan Graham, a junior from Ben Lomond, won the 100 breaststroke and was the only other area girls champion.

Supplied by Andrea Sweet

On the boys side, Ogden senior Bradyn Reeves won the 200 freestyle, the 500 freestyle and swam on the first-place 200 freestyle relay team with Porter Bartlett, Ty Willey and Dawson Malan.

Ogden won the boys title in part because it had swimmers finish fifth or better in every single event, sometimes with multiple swimmers in the top five.

It was hard for Sweet to spotlight individual swimmers on the boys team, but Reeves and Bartlett were two names she mentioned along with Brooks Mortensen (second in the 100 backstroke, swam on two first-place relay teams), freshman Nathan Belnap (fifth in the 100 butterfly, helped the 200 freestyle relay team take third) and freshman Case Crowther (second in the 100 breaststroke, fifth in the 200 IM).

That helped the Tigers edge a Morgan team that had first-place finishes from senior Brayden Noorda (200 IM and 100 backstroke), senior Ty Lewis (100 freestyle) and the 400 freestyle relay team of Noorda, Lewis, Tyler Robertson and Gerrit Noorda.

Will Jones, a junior from St. Joseph, won the 50 freestyle and 100 butterfly, the latter of which he won by 8.41 seconds.

While Saturday was the first time both Ogden swimming teams won their region championship since 1986, each teams’ region-winning droughts varied. The girls team had last won a region championship in 1989, 33 years ago, while the boys’ most recent region triumph was 2009.

Next up for both teams is the state meet, which is next weekend at BYU.

Neither team is expected to replicate the region meet success at the much tougher state meet, but they’re both hoping for some improvement over last year’s 18th-place finishes.

“There’s some fast swimmers and it’ll be nice for us to be able to compete where we’ll be able to have great competition and we have a few swimmers positioned to medal,” Sweet said.