A lethal combination of slower times and stiffer competition left competitors from Monta Vista and Cupertino off the podium at the first ever California State swimming championships last weekend at Clovis West High School in Fresno.
Only Matador boys standout Lucca Martins and the Pioneers’ girls medley relay team made it through the preliminaries and into last Saturday’s championship finals, but both finished out of the money, posting times that did not match their respective performances a week earlier at the qualifying Central Coast Section Championships.
Martins, a junior, finished eighth in the finals of both the 200-yard individual medley and the 100 backstroke, while Cupertino’s talented quartet of Ivy Chen, Jenny Ma, Avalon Schultz and Anna Rajaratnam settled for seventh in the 200 medley relay.
Martins posted times of 1:52.19 in the IM and 50.49 in the back after having registered respective marks of 1:50.99 and 49.77 in the prelims. At CCS, he had taken a fourth in the IM in 1:49.76 and a third in the back in 49.71.
Cupertino’s relay unit recorded a time of 1:46.08 after a much quicker time of 1:45.32 in the prelims, where they came in fourth. The quartet finished first at CCS in the event in 1:44.77.
In Friday’s prelims, Martins, Keven Shang, Jarold Olay and Felix Chiun failed to qualify for Saturday’s finals in both the 200 medley and 400 freestyle relays. They finished 10th in the medley in 1:34.97 and 25th in the free in 3:12.85. At CCS, the foursome was second in the medley in 1:33.54 and fourth in the free in 3:10.68.
Shang also came in 16th in the 100 breaststroke preliminaries in 57.17, which was an improvement over his 57.19 while finishing third at the section meet.
