Irvine Misses Sweep by an Eyelash, Wins Convincingly

Less time than it takes to blink was all that separated Irvine High from sweeping all seven events in the Long Beach Millikan swim relays Saturday at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach.

With their best performance ever in an event they have now won three consecutive times, the Vaqueros set a Southern Section record in the 200 backstroke relay and outdistanced their closest competitor by 72 points, finishing with 274. Villa Park was second at 202 and La Crescenta Crescenta Valley third at 142.

Irvine fell short of perfection when Dana Hills won the 200 freestyle relay in 2 minutes 17.55 seconds, with Irvine .06 seconds behind at 2:17.61. Third-place Villa Park was a full two seconds behind, finishing at 2:19.94.

“We wished we’d have lost two [races] so the spotlight would be off the one that we didn’t win,” said Vaquero Coach Ken Dory after the celebratory post-meet swim.

Really?

“No,” he said, “We want to win them all. Everybody faces the same kind of problem in a relay event like this because you have to spread the swimmers out. You’ve got save some for the events coming up.

“This just shows how hard it is to win seven events.”

Irvine set the standard for the 200 backstroke relay a day earlier in the preliminaries with a Southern Section-record 1:38.23. The Vaqueros then bested themselves in the final round, finishing in 1:37.20, almost eight seconds ahead of second-place Fountain Valley (1:45.20).

“There were no real fast splits, but [leadoff swimmer] Phil Kim was the key there,” Dory said. “We didn’t think he could go that fast.”

Irvine began the evening with a one-second victory in the 400 intermediate relays (3:38.41) and ended it by finishing two seconds ahead in the 200 medley relay (1:40.51). In between the Vaqueros won the 200 breaststroke (1:55.62), the 200 butterfly (1:38.57) and the 400 freestyle relay (3:14.96).

“It’s basically nothing the coaches did that made the difference,” Dory said. “The kids are just that fast.”