Finally, It’s Williamson’s Turn to Surface : Girls’ swimming: The Los Alamitos’ senior, who swam in Janet Evans’ wake for past two years, might now be county’s best.

After two years in the wake of one of the best swimmers in the world, Nicole Williamson might finally get some attention.

Williamson, a senior at Los Alamitos High School, has been one of the top high school swimmers in Orange County since she was a sophomore. Unfortunately for her, Janet Evans, lived in the same county.

The two also competed in the same section meets, the same league and the same events. So, while Evans was setting national high school records in the 500-yard freestyle and 200 individual medley, Williamson was collecting some nifty second-place medals.

“People kept asking me why I insisted on swimming those events when I knew was only going to get second place,” Williamson said. “Those were my best events and I was going to swim in them. It just happened that they were Janet’s best events, too.”

Well, perseverance, with a touch of stubbornness, has paid off.

Evans graduated from El Dorado last June and is now competing for Stanford. So the honor of being the best female high school swimmer in the county is up for grabs, as well as open for debate.

Williamson and Sionnaion Marcoux of Foothill are the two names mentioned most by coaches in the county, with the edge going to Williamson.

She has the top times of any returning swimmer in the 500 free and 200 IM. Williamson has also shown versatility by swimming strong times in nearly every event.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that Nicole is the best in the county this year,” Los Alamitos Coach Debbie Fleming said. “She could have won any other event in last year’s meet. But she chose to swim against Janet because those events were her favorites.”

Fleming said Williamson has been an asset to the team as a teacher as well as a swimmer. Last season, Williamson learned a new technique in the breaststroke and Fleming asked her to teach it to teammate Stephanie Murphy.

Murphy’s time in the breast stroke improved so much that other swimmers on the team wanted Williamson to teach them the technique. She was soon tutoring them in other events as well.

“She would work with one of our swimmers during lunch and or after school,” Fleming said. “It gives the other swimmers someone to work with one-on-one. Nicole is really good at analyzing flaws and correcting them. We call her our stroke specialist.”

Williamson has improved her own times this season on the high school and national levels. Last week at the U.S. Swimming senior nationals, Williamson had a personal best in the 1,000-meter free.

At the Southern Section 3-A meet in 1989, she had a time of 4:53.60 seconds in the 500 free and 2:05.30 in the 200 IM. This season, Williamson already has swam a 4:54.90 in the 500 free and 2:08.25 in the 200 IM.

“I need to work on my IM a little bit more,” Williamson said. “I’m not real happy with it right now. I just have to keep working at it. Nothing is handed to you on a silver plate.”

Williamson said that she will miss competing against Evans this season.

Williamson and Evans were teammates on the Fullerton Aquatic Swim Team and sometimes worked out together.

“It helped me a lot,” said Williamson, who has signed a letter of intent to swim at Michigan next year. “Swimming with Janet always seemed to push me to do better. I could always tell how well I was doing by how far ahead Janet was.”

Williamson did come close to beating Evans once in the 100-yard backstroke. During the 1988 Empire League finals, they came to the finish line almost dead even, but Evans touched first.

After that, they never faced each other in the league finals again.

“We really didn’t like racing against each other in league, so we avoided it,” Williamson said. “We both asked our coaches to put us in separate events.”

But they did race four times in Southern Section 3-A championship meets. Evans set national high school records in three of those races.

Last season, Evans won the 200 IM in 1:59.96 to became the first female swimmer to go under two minutes in a high school meet. She then waited in the pool for Williamson, who finished second with a personal-best 2:05.30.

“I was catching my breath and Janet jumped over the lane line and hugged me,” Williamson said. “Here she had just set a national record and she wanted to congratulate me. That was neat.”

But would winning have been better?

“Winning was never the important thing for me. It was more important to swim my best time,” Williamson said. “Still, I’m a little happy that she’s gone. Maybe I can get a championship for myself now.”