 | | | Photo Doug Kohen
| | | | | | The rain held off on Saturday, May 14th until the seven teams within the Diablo Foothill Athletic League (DFAL) finished swimming to determine league champion. As expected, the competition was stiff with many close races. At the end of the day at Campolindo's Soda Center, nine meet records fell (see sidebar) and all three Lamorinda high schools finished extremely well.
On the men's side, Miramonte achieved first place over top-ranked Campolindo by a very small margin. Third place went to Acalanes. In the women's competition, Campo was the overall winner with Miramonte placing second. Acalanes came in fourth behind Las Lomas.
Swimming is not so much about team scores as it is about individual performances and achieving personal bests. Miramonte sophomore Charlie Wiser had a great day, finishing first in both the 200 yard IM and the 100 yard breaststroke - both with comfortable two-second margins. The explosive men's 50 yard freestyle was over just 20.71 seconds after the starting gun with a new record set by Acalanes senior Piankhi Gibson. Campolindo senior Jeffrey Strausser, who was the top seed and previous record holder, gave Gibson a run for his money finishing a half second behind him.
Campolindo senior Dana Holt also had a fantastic meet. Holt won the 50 yard freestyle with a half second margin over Miramonte senior Sierra Robbins; they finished with the times of 23.54 and 24.04 respectively. In the 100 yard freestyle Holt touched out Las Lomas' Taylor Carlson in a hold-your-breath finish.
Although nine records were broken, Miramonte coach Don Heidary stated, "I was not surprised that many records were broken. The league is very competitive and there are a number of nationally ranked swimmers. I would imagine that most of the records were set as unshaven swims, which makes it that much more impressive."
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Campolindo Men Take NCS
In the NCS finals held this past weekend the Campolindo men - six time defending champions-once again came out on top. Coach Dave Schurhoff said, "NCS is the pinnacle of our season and the biggest stage for swimmers on the high school level in the east bay. North Coast has been a focus for our men's team all year."
Acalanes took fifth place, and Miramonte came in sixth out of the field of 40 schools. The Campolindo women finished in 3rd place, followed by Miramonte and Acalanes in 7th and 11th place, respectively, out of 37 schools.
In a DFAL rematch, Acalanes senior Pianhki Gibson once again edged out Campolindo senior Jeffrey Strausser, this time by only .08 of a second, to win the 50 yard free; Gibson also won the 100 yard butterfly. The Campolindo women took the 100 yard freestyle relay, and senior Dana Holt won the 50 yard freestyle.
Two NCS records changed hands between Campolindo and Miramonte. In the men's 200 yard medley relay, Miramonte seniors Nick Deaver and Aleck Ryner, junior Robbie Fluegge, and sophomore Charlie Wiser broke a record set by Campolindo in 1984, finishing at 1:34:16. Campolindo in turn took a record that had been held by Miramonte since 1987, in the 400 yard freestyle relay- the team of Strausser, juniors Robert Ashby and Tor Jensen, and sophomore Sven Campbell came in at 3:03:97.
Other new NCS records include:
Men's 200 yard IM, sophomore Steven Stumph (Campolindo), 1:49:46
Men's 200 yard freestyle relay, Campolindo, 1:23:35 (seniors Jeffrey Campbell and Nick Zolintakis, Ashby, and S. Campbell broke their own record, set in the preliminary round)
Men's 100 yard breaststroke, Charlie Wiser (Miramonte), 55.27
Men's 100 yard backstroke, Sven Campbell (Campolindo), 49.74
L.Borrowman
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Lamorinda Weekly, Moraga CA