Crescenta Valley High girls’ swimming clinches share of Pacific League crown versus Arcadia

LA CRESCENTA — Arcadia High opened its annual Pacific League swimming dual meet Wednesday by defeating rival Crescenta Valley in both the girls’ and boys’ 200-yard medley relays.

The quick start allowed the Apaches to set a significant tone in the boys’ showdown, but set the stage for an impressive comeback for the Falcons in the girls’ matchup.

Crescenta Valley responded by winning seven of the next eight girls’ races to post a 95-75 victory over previously unbeaten Arcadia, putting itself in position to capture an eighth straight league title.

PHOTOS: CV girls’ swim team defeats Arcadia; Boys’ swim team loses

The Falcons weren’t so fortunate in the boys’ competition, suffering an 89-81 loss, their first league setback since falling to Arcadia by an identical margin in 2008.

Crescenta Valley (5-2, 4-1) can still earn a share of its 23rd consecutive championship with a victory over Arcadia (7-0, 5-0) at the May 7 league finals.

“Being in this position presents us with a great opportunity,” Falcons Coach Jan Sakonju said. “Obviously our guys are disappointed they lost, but now it’s all about how we gather ourselves and regroup and rebound to get ready for league finals.”

Crescenta Valley cut an early 10-point deficit to 63-61 after Sol Yoon, Wesley Hovanessian, Taehoon Kim and Bradford Hales won the 200 freestyle relay in 1 minute, 34.42 seconds, but Arcadia relied on Tenny Chong and Daniel Chao to deny a potential Falcons’ comeback, despite Edward Yi winning the 200 freestyle (1:48.18) and 500 freestyle (5:04.03).

Chong led three Apaches placing in the top four in the 100 backstroke with a victory in 56.12 and Chao contributed to a similar performance for Arcadia in the 100 breaststroke by winning in 1:01.49 to extend the advantage to 14 points. Chong also won the 50 freestyle in 22.05 and Chao prevailed in the 200 individual medley in 1:58.96.

“They showed up in tech suits, some of them shaved, so obviously they were very focused on winning this,” said Sakonju, who also received victories in the 100 freestyle from Eddie Gallehugh (51.05) and in the 100 butterfly from Yoon (55.85). “We tried to plan out what they were going to swim, but they moved some guys around and that really helped them. Now if we’re going to win it again, we’ve got to do it the hard way.”

Although the Falcons had Hyunsung Kim, Gallehugh, Eric Park and Yi win the 400 freestyle relay in 3:20.47, Arcadia had enough of a cushion to preserve the victory.

“We’ve got to make sure we maintain our focus when we go to the league meet, so we can perform our best,” Arcadia Coach Janice Clark said. “An eight-point margin is extremely close, so we’ve got to build more and more depth to get as many guys as possible into finals. I think this definitely helped build our confidence, but we have to keep improving.”

Yvette Kim, Samantha Kohn and Heather MacDougall helped Crescenta Valley overcome its early deficit by each winning two individual events, highlighted by Kim’s leading a sweep of the top three places in the 100 butterfly.

The Falcons (7-1, 5-0) also took the top two spots in the 200 freestyle relay, with MacDougall joining Genevieve Gonzalez, Alyssa Nguyen and Megan Nguyen to win in 1:50.30.

“We knew that [200 freestyle] relay isn’t stacked as much and we knew they had a really good medley relay, so we wanted to maximize our points in other places as much as possible,” Kohn said. “We always work up to this meet because it’s such an exciting meet and we have to try our hardest in order to win this meet.”

Kohn doubled in the 50 freestyle (26.16) and 500 freestyle (5:34.12), Kim captured the 100 butterfly (1:00.87) and 200 IM (2:14.62), with MacDougall winning the 100 backstroke (1:01.43) and 200 freestyle (1:59.77) to build a 30-point lead over the Apaches (6-1, 4-1), who won the final two events.