PREP SWIMMING ROUNDUP : El Toro Girls, Mission Viejo Boys Win Titles

Those El Toro girls not only swim fast, their hearing is excellent.

“I can hear a fat lady singing in the distance,” El Toro Coach Sheri Ross said as the final races of the South Coast League were contested Friday at El Toro High.

She sang for the Mission Viejo boys, who defeated El Toro for the title, as well as the El Toro girls, who outdistanced second-place Mission Viejo. The league championship was the 15th for the Diablos and the eighth for the Chargers.

With their victory, El Toro became the first team in school history to win eight league championships, one more than the football and softball teams, according to Ross.

Both El Toro teams came into the league meet having gone undefeated in dual meets, but El Toro boys’ Coach John Grosse expected a strong Mission Viejo effort.

“We beat them in the dual meet, but they had some guys out,” Grosse said. “This meet depends on your fourth guy and their fourth guy was better.”

The four Diablos who swam the boys’ 200-yard medley relay were certainly better than the rest of the field, as Mission Viejo broke the meet record. Robert Delgado, Ahmad Filsoff, Brad Kaup and Andy Davis posted a 1 minute, 28.59 seconds, which broke the 1:28.62 Mission Viejo set last year.

El Toro freshman Katie Lowes, undefeated in the 50 free and 100 free all season, kept her perfect record intact with victories Friday.

Mission Viejo’s Cheryl Murphy and Capistrano Valley’s Cathy Carone kept their 100 backstroke rivalry going and both bettered the old meet record. Murphy won in 58.49 and Carone took second in 59.05, which broke the 59.51 mark set by Mission Viejo’s Lisa Meyers in 1984.

Mission Viejo’s Peter Struglinski turned in a 57.51 in the 100 breaststroke to tie the meet record set in 1987 by Capistrano Valley’s Mike Welch.