Volcan Goes For Broke, Shines in Preliminaries

When Erin Volcan arrived at the Belmont Plaza Olympic Pool Thursday for the Southern Section Division I swimming preliminaries, the Canyon sophomore planned to take it easy--do just enough to get by, don’t push too hard, save enough for the finals.

However, as Volcan watched San Clemente stun the field in a 200 medley relay heat with a county-best time of 1:49.38, it got her competitive juices flowing and a new game plan emerged.

“Last night I told myself I’d swim just fast enough to qualify for the finals,” Volcan said. “But I got here, and everyone was swimming so fast, I decided I was going to go full-speed too.”

Volcan’s change of heart not only helped her qualify for today’s finals in four events, but she also posted the fastest times of the day in two of them.

Her time in the 100 backstroke, 56.44 seconds, topped her own county-best time of 56.71, and she had the fastest split in the 400 freestyle relay at 51.42, rallying her teammates from third to first.

Volcan’s winning time of 1:50.66 in her 200 freestyle heat was only a shade slower than that of Newport Harbor’s Carly Geehr, who won her own heat in 1:50.60.

While concentrating on taking home a few Southern Section titles, Volcan also has Olympic dreams in mind. She’s trying to become the first woman to represent Venezuela in swimming, and is still trying to swim times fast enough to impress team officials.

“They keep changing their minds,” said Volcan, whose father was born in Venezuela, giving her dual citizenship. “I totally want to go and be the first girl on the team, but sometimes I talk to them and I’m in, then the next thing I know, they change their mind again.”

In other noteworthy performances:

* Sarah Jones of San Clemente topped Volcan’s county-best time in the 50 freestyle with a 23.79, and bettered her own best in the 100 freestyle at 51.92.

* Scott Baer of Dana Hills had the fastest time in the 100 freestyle (47.56).

In the Division II preliminaries:

Cavic fastest in butterfly--Tustin’s Matt Cavic finished only five-hundredths of a second off a meet record in the 100 butterfly, winning his heat in 49.52.

Santa Margarita’s Jonathan Russell improved on his county-best times in two events, trimming almost four seconds off his best time in the 200 freestyle by winning his heat in 1:40.80, and swimming a 46.78 in the 100 freestyle.