Final Show for Granada Hills’ Sister Act : Kristine Quance Has Unfinished Business in City Swim Meet

She is a six-time national champion, a Swimming World cover girl, a Sports Illustrated Face in the Crowd. She has the second-fastest time in the 200-meter breaststroke in American swimming history, and is accustomed to competing against the Chinese, Australians, and Germans.

Yet for the past 12 months, Kristine Quance has been gearing for tonight’s City Section championships at Belmont Plaza Pool in Long Beach.

She relishes the opportunity to swim with her sisters, Keri and Julie, and her childhood pal, Erin Shaw.

The Granada Hills High foursome will attempt to break the City Section record of 1 minute 55.86 seconds in the 200-yard medley relay.

“Quance plus 1,” as they are dubbed, also will make a run at the more challenging 400-yard freestyle relay record of 3:43.66.

In last week’s preliminaries without the advantage of tapering (dramatically curtailing their training yardage) and shaving (leg hair that has been allowed to grow all season), they swam the medley in 1:58.10 and the freestyle relay in 3:53.00.

Tonight, they will be tapered, shaved, and motivated.

“We just don’t want Palisades and Venice to beat us, because they’re so cocky,” Kristine said. “I’ve watched them beat us the last two years. In the locker room afterward, they sing all their chants.”

The Granada Hills quartet does not have chants, though the foursome might don temporary tattoos, the psyche-up rage in swimming the last two years.

What they do have is the familiarity to demand excellence from one another, as a gathering of the quartet this week revealed.

Keri, a junior, is on the hot seat after flubbing her flip turn in the preliminaries and costing the freestyle relay about three seconds.

“I just hope Keri swims a little faster,” Kristine said. “She’s gone so much faster in the past.”

When Keri insisted that her fogged-up goggles made her miss the wall and finish in one minute, Kristine said: “Keri, you missed the wall last year when you went 57 seconds.”

Turning to a visitor, Kristine said: “The only way we can get Keri to go faster is if she’s mad.”

Erin’s swift, 57-second time in the preliminaries got her off the hook.

“They’re not bothering me,” she said. “But it’s not because I’m not their sister.”

The nearly two-year age gap between Kristine and Julie, a sophomore, prevented them from swimming on the same relay teams as youngsters. In their only year together in high school, Kristine, a senior, is determined to make this sisterly combination one for the record books.

“She keeps reminding us of that,” Keri said.

The medley relay is set. Julie swims the lead-off backstroke leg, followed by Kristine (breaststroke), Erin (butterfly) and Keri (freestyle).

The order of the freestyle relay will be determined by Coach Steve Reardon with plenty of unsolicited strategic advice.

“We’ll probably be behind after Julie swims,” Kristine said. Turning to Julie, she added softly, “Sorry, Julie.”

They all agree that Keri will swim faster if an opponent is slightly ahead.

“I think I should go second,” Julie said. “And then we’ll be a little bit behind and Keri will go faster.”

Keri and Julie are convincing when they insist that they are not overshadowed by Kristine. The younger sisters play basketball at Granada Hills and . . .

“They go out on Friday night,” Kristine blurted out. “They have social lives.”

Their unity extends to appearances. All three wear their hair long and straight. Although they always have styled their hair similarly, it is purely coincidental.

“Usually we try to do things not to be alike,” Kristine said.

A bit of dark humor on Keri’s part helps loosen up the ultra-competitive Kristine. When Kristine returned home from Seattle in 1991 after losing to eventual Olympian Anita Nall, Keri and Erin presented her with a gift.

It was a poster-sized article on Nall.

Kristine is so far above the City Section competition that she could win every race tonight. But each swimmer is limited to two individual events, in her case the 200-yard individual medley and the 100-yard breaststroke.

Her goal in the 200 IM is to break the national high school record of 1:59.96 set by Olympic gold medalist Janet Evans in 1989.

In the preliminaries, unshaved and unrested, she clocked a 2:01.08, breaking her 1991 City Section record of 2:02.21.

The national record in the breaststroke, set in 1983 by Ohio’s Laci Faltay, is 1:01.17. Kristine finished in 1:03.26 in the preliminaries and her 1992 City record is 1:02.86.

Those races will take a back seat to the relays, as Kristine’s swimming life and family life come together for one magical night.