Redlands’ Hale, Yucaipa’s Krug duel for swim records

Joey Hale of Redlands and Karl Krug of Yucaipa are friends, club teammates and practically neighbors, but on Friday night during the Southern Section-Toyota Division I boys’ swimming finals at the Belmont Plaza Pool in Long Beach, they were intense rivals.

Two days after swimming the same record-breaking times in the 50-yard freestyle, they became the first high school swimmers to deliver sub-20 second performances in the same race.

Hale won the 50 free in 19.95 seconds, lowering the 48-hour-old division meet record of 20.05 set in Wednesday’s preliminaries, followed by Krug in 19.98. Heading into the week, the division meet record was 20.27, established by Derya Buyukuncu of Irvine Woodbridge in 1994.

“He’s the biggest rival out here,” Hale said of Krug. “We train together, and it’s awesome to swim that fast right next to him. It was so close the whole way.”

As club teammates on Redlands Swim Team, Krug said he and Hale have learned to never give an inch during workouts or races.

“If you do, you lose,” Krug said. “We push each other to be our best every day.”

Krug wasn’t to be left out of the record books, however. After defeating Hale in the 100 free, he came back with his Yucaipa teammates Trevor Hoyt, Clint Johnson and Michael Perry to win the 200 free relay in 1:23.04, lowering their division meet record of 1:23.58 from two days earlier and breaking the national public school record of 1:23.15. Krug opened the relay with a 20.17 split.

The same foursome came back in the 400 free relay, determined to take aim at Mission Viejo’s 25-year-old division meet record of 3:03.34, but came up just short, finishing in 3:03.76. Krug said they’ll take another shot at the record Tuesday night at the Masters Meet at Belmont Plaza.

Yucaipa also got the best of Redlands in the team score, totaling 241 points. Redlands scored 198 points to finish runner-up for the second consecutive season.

The efforts of Hale and Krug nearly overshadowed the performance of Huntington Beach Edison junior Tom Shields, who also lowered his two-day-old division meet record in the 100 butterfly, winning in 47.57. Shields had won his prelim heat in 48.00, which broke the 11-year-old record of 48.25, set by Philippe Demers of Santa Margarita.

In the girls’ competition, Cindy Tran of Edison won the 100 backstroke in 53.61, shattering the five-year-old division meet record of 54.19 set by Diana MacManus of Irvine.

Mission Viejo scored 253 points to win its third consecutive team title. Edison was second with 219.50 points.

 dan.arritt@latimes.com