Flintridge Prep, Pasadena Poly swimming split wins
PASADENA — While there were no major upsets at Thursday afternoon’s Prep League swim meet at Pasadena Poly, there were still a few pleasant surprises.
The Prep League-leading Rebels boys’ team again flexed its muscles with a 125-45 victory, highlighted by a historic effort from junior Marco Flores, while the Panthers’ girls rebounded from a loss a few days earlier in notching a 103-76 win.
On a day filled with several CIF Southern Section Division III automatic qualifying marks, Flores stood out when he broke a six-year-old pool record when he swam to victory in the 100-yard butterfly in a time of 54.31 seconds.
“I talked to [assistant coach] Ingrid Herskind right before my event and she told me what the record was,” Flores said. “I knew I could break it and that’s what I was trying to do.”
Flores raced to a 25.11-second first lap split before shattering the previous pool best of 55.19, set by Poly’s Andrew Saeta in April of 2007.
The victory was one of four for Flores, who captured the 200 individual medley in a divisional automatic qualifying time of 2:03.04. That was after joining with teammates Bruce Park, Carlo Sivilotti and Kevin Park for a victory in the 200-yard medley relay in 1:43.40.
The foursome contributed in a few other victories as well. Park won both the 200 freestyle in a consideration mark of 1:56.33 and the 100 backstroke in an automatic time of 58.10, while Sivilotti captured the 50 free in a consideration time of 22.99. Park, Sivilotti and Flores then joined Gary Lee in the 400-yard freestyle relay for a win with an automatic mark of 3:26.33.
Flintridge Prep sophomore Gabriel Fernandez also took home the 500 freestyle in a consideration time of 5:29.70, while Ethan Vandeventer won the 100 free (54.37), Kevin Chang took the 100 breaststroke (1:11.16) and the squad of Sivilotti, Vandeventer, Lee and John Treinen captured the 200 freestyle relay in a consideration time of 1:37.05 to complete a clean sweep of victories.
“Today was about focusing our team and making sure we have everything right,” Prep co-Coach Michael Lawrence said, as the Rebels improved to 5-0 overall and 3-0 in league. “We’re going to come back here for the Prep League prelims and finals and this was a good experience.”
While the Panthers boys dropped to 3-6 overall and 1-2 in league, the girls (7-2, 3-1) rebounded from a loss to Mayfield, 106-76, on Tuesday.
“Everyone stepped up to be honest. We were missing a few girls,” Poly Coach Jessica Berger said. “We had the opportunity to see what other girls could do in events and we got a good look.”
One such girl was junior Caroline Harvey, who had a hand in four victories.
Harvey joined up with freshman Heather Grotzinger, junior Kaitlyn Olah and senior Lauren Lantry in taking the opening 200-yard medley relay in a consideration time of 2:08.31 before combining with Lantry Grotzinger and Mara Veitch in taking the 200 free relay in 1:57.51. Individually, Harvey also took home wins in the 100 free in a consideration time of 59.11 and the 100 breaststroke in another consideration time of 1:15.83.
Other individual wins came from Grotzinger in the 100 butterfly (consideration time of 1:05.56) and 100 backstroke (consideration mark of 1:07.48) and Veitch in the 50 free (30.50).
Despite losing, Prep (1-5, 1-3) notched wins from Jennifer Langen in the 200 freestyle (automatic time of 2:03.21) and 500 freestyle (consideration of 5:48.41), Lauren Au in the 200 IM (2:38.73), Madison Witt in the one-meter dive (246.20 points) and the 400 freestyle relay team of Langen, Au, Kim Cheng and Wallace Herzog also were victorious in a consideration time of 4:18.79.