ECR Loses Swimming Title to Palisades

Sitting with a note pad beside the pool, El Camino Real High Coach Corey Stanbury carefully charted the progress of Wednesday evening’s City swim championships.

Based on times posted at last week’s preliminaries, Stanbury knew the Palisades boys team was a 26-point favorite over El Camino Real, and he calculated the events in which his team needed to pick up points. That kind of precision has led to eight previous City titles for El Camino.

Stanbury added up the points until the end, but El Camino Real couldn’t accumulate enough as Palisades won the City title at East Los Angeles College with 242 points. El Camino Real had 186 and Birmingham was third with 137.

Palisades’ girls won the meet’s final event, the 400 relay, to upset El Camino Real and take its fifth consecutive title. Palisades had 247 points, El Camino Real had 240 and Venice was third with 169.

When the final results were announced, Palisades Coach Rick Goeden climbed onto the diving board and dove into the pool. He was joined moments later by most of the girls team.

“I’m most impressed with the girls’ win,” Goeden said. “We only had 12 girls this time. We’d never won this meet with less than 17.”

Said Stanbury: “I’m disappointed about the girls because I though we had a chance. We swam really well, but we just didn’t have enough.”

In the boys’ competition, Palisades did not have as many dominating swimmers as El Camino Real but had greater depth. This is the first time Palisades has won the title outright. It tied for the title in 1974.

“This is probably the youngest team we’ve ever brought to the City finals,” Palisades Coach Rick Goeden said. “We scouted El Camino quite a bit and knew what to expect. Our biggest motivation was that we had so many people in so many events.”

Said El Camino swimmer Cliff Rossie: “We only had eight guys getting points and they had 15. That makes it real hard to win. We did the best we could, we just didn’t have enough people this year.”

El Camino received strong individual efforts from Bob Baldocchi and Rossie, both of whom were double winners. Baldocchi, a senior, won the 100- and 200-yard freestyle races. He won the 100 in 46.07, narrowly missing the City record of 45.83 he set last year.

Rossie, a junior, won the 200 individual medley and the 100 butterfly. In the 200 medley he swam 1:58.62, nearly two seconds faster than his previous best.

Kevin Shepard and Greg Robins sparked Palisades with their one-two finish in the 50 freestyle. They became favored to take the top two spots when Baldocchi, the City record holder in the event, did not compete. Swimmers are allowed to compete in only two individual races and Baldocchi passed up the 50 in favor of the 200 freestyle.

In the girls 200 individual medley, Michelle Saxer of Palisades broke her City record of 2:11.84, winning the race in 2:11.41. Saxer also won the 100 butterfly in 58.91, eight-hundredths of a second ahead of El Camino’s Audrey Rossie.