Palisades Sweeps Swimming Titles

Palisades High came to the City Section swimming championships Wednesday hoping to bring home a team title for the second consecutive season. The Dolphins doubled their pleasure, winning the boys’ and girls’ competitions at USC.

The Palisades girls’ team wasn’t as fast as it was in the preliminaries last week, but the Dolphins were deep enough to win the championship for the second consecutive season. The Dolphins solidified the victory by placing three swimmers in the top five in the 500 freestyle.

“That pretty much did it for us,” Palisades Coach Merle Duckett said.

Palisades, which defeated second-place Woodland Hills El Camino Real, 284.5-229, missed breaking the section record in the 200 freestyle relay for the second consecutive week. The Dolphins won in 1:41.52, just off their record-breaking preliminary time of 1:41.50. The Dolphins’ only other victory came from freshman Cara Davidoff, who won the 50 freestyle in 24.62.

Duckett wasn’t sure why times were slower than last week, but said it was probably a combination of nerves, a poor taper and Stanford 9 testing that began this week.

The Palisades boys’ team won its first team title since 1992, securing the victory by winning the final event, the 400 freestyle relay, in 3:27.42.

The Dolphins scored 170 points, Venice was second (155) and Reseda Cleveland was third (146).

Sean McDevitt of Palisades won the 50 freestyle (22.49), the 100 freestyle (48.83) and anchored winning 200 and 400 freestyle relay teams.

Tyler Clark of Granada Hills broke a 20-year-old section record in the 200 individual medley. Clark won the event in 1:55.18, clipping the mark of 1:55.22 set by Jeff Kline of Granada Hills Kennedy.

Clark was relieved to break a record he has been chasing since his sophomore season, but wasn’t thrilled with his time. Clark said he felt sluggish during the race and was slowed before making the turn on his opening leg because his arm wrapped around an electric cord protruding from his lane’s touch pad.

“I’m disappointed,” he said. “I thought I’d feel better during the race.”

Clark came back to win the 100 butterfly in 51.16, just off the section record of 50.77 set by Tom Liliekis of Woodland Hills El Camino Real in 1984.

Dan Arritt

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In boys’ tennis:

Individual tournament--Top-seeded Jason Nguyen of Chatsworth, who defaulted the title match because of an injury as a sophomore in 2000 and didn’t play last season, advanced to this year’s City semifinals with a 6-2, 6-4 victory over El Camino Real’s Dan Nguyen (no relation) at Balboa Sports Complex in Encino.

Jason Nguyen, a talented senior who chose not to play high school tennis last season, will face Palisades freshman Chris Ko in one singles semifinal Friday at the same site. Ko beat Fairfax’s Artyom Fatkhiev, 6-2, 6-1.

In the other semifinal will be No. 2-seeded Nima Roshan of Granada Hills, the defending champion who will take on Venice senior left-hander Jeff Melnick.

Roshan defeated Cleveland’s Jared Drucker, 6-2, 2-6, 6-1, in the quarterfinals. Melnick topped Cleveland’s Calvin Chan, 6-1, 6-4.