SWIMMING : Ramos’ Season Ends on Bittersweet Note

Winning the consolation championship in the 200-yard individual medley at Wednesday’s City Section swimming finals at Belmont Plaza didn’t do much to console Garfield High’s Martha Ramos after a difficult year.

Ramos’ training and enthusiasm for swimming took a severe jolt midway through the season when Bulldog Coach Richard Morris died March 20 after suffering severe injuries in a car accident.

Interim Coach Jane Ostrowski kept the team together after the tragedy, but it took the excitement of the City finals to get Ramos enthused enough to swim again.

“It really has been a hard year,” Ramos said. “My training suffered. I wasn’t swimming as much as I should have. We’re all just starting to pull through now.”

The consolation title marked a bittersweet ending for Ramos, who qualified for the championship final in the 100 freestyle and helped Garfield to the finals in the 200 and 400 freestyle relay teams at the 1994 finals. The 200 freestyle relay team finished third.

At the finals, the best the Bulldogs could manage was Ramos’ consolation title (2:32.04) and a second-place consolation finish by Elizabeth Hernandez (100 butterfly) as the girls’ team finished 13th with 19 team points.

Marshall was the only area school to place a swimmer in a championship final. Solette Kummer dropped her qualifying time by more than half of a second for a third-place finish in the 100 freestyle.

Her time of 58.91 was over 3 1/2 seconds slower than champion Natalie Shapiro of Granada Hills. The Barristers finished three points behind Garfield in the team standings.

The Roosevelt boys’ team didn’t qualify any swimmers for championship races. But the Roughriders piled up enough points in the consolation finals to finish in 11th place.

The 400 freestyle relay team of Albert Angulo, Lucien Hernandez, Adan Maciel and Peter Mejia won the consolation title in 3:58.88, defeating Cleveland by more than 33 seconds.