May 28

May 19

OLP 8th at CIF

The highlight of the day was Haley Ferrer's ('11) CIF win and school record in the 100 Freestyle.  Haley was also runner-up in the 50 Freestyle.  Individual scoring also came from Colleen Patton ('08) (500 Fr - 11th), Elyse Witt (100 Bk - 11th), and Holly Belasco (100 Fly - 10th).  The ladies also placed two relays in the top six, finishing the meet with a season best 400 Freestyle Relay time.  Although they will lose Senior points in the individual events and will lose a lot of relay legs to exiting Seniors, the Pilots have a lot of potential in the underclasses.  We expect OLP to sustain or improve their performance on the all three relays, with particular emphasis on getting the 200 Medley Relay under 2:00.  With some CIF points from OLP divers expected next year, the ladies should be able to improve upon their 8th place CIF finish and will continue to drive towards the elusive top two City Conference finish.

Saints posts top CIF Swimming team finish in school history 

The Saintsmen entered the CIF finals with 26 points from the divers - Chris Ackman (3rd), Nico Espinosa (6th) and Daniel Marks (8th) - and seeding that placed the team in third place and within striking distance of the leaders - defending CIF champion Mount Carmel and City Conference champion La Jolla.  The deficit was such that Saints needed to be perfect and needed to pull off a couple of upsets if it was going to overtake one or both of the top two seeds. 

During the season, Saints 200 Free Relay had hovered in the 1:32 range and turned in a stellar performance at the City Conference finals to establish a team mark of 1:30.39.  La Jolla had turned in a dominating City performance with a 1:28.61 that left the field, literally, in its wake.  The season best 50 times of Pete Giacalone (22.6) ('08), Ian Heacox (22.6) ('08), Max Kathol (22.9) ('08), and Clay Christy (21.7) ('09) didn't look very competitive.  At best, it appeared that the boys would be able to break 1:30.  They new that something big needed to happen for the tide of the team scoring to begin to turn in their favor, and something big did happen - a new Saints 200 Freestyle relay record of 1:28.94, but it wasn't quite enough.  That was the story of CIF finals for the boys, swimming maginificently performance after performance with Mount Carmel and La Jolla doing just enough to prevent the big breakthrough.  Other performances of note:

200 Medley Relay - Team Record - Paul Guzman ('09), Neil Heacox ('08), Pete, Sean Glass ('10)

400 Free Relay - Team Record - Clay, Sean, Paul, Ian

On the day, 7 of the 12 relay swims were personal best times and the balance of the rest right on best time.

100 Freestyle - Team Record - Clay

200 Individual Medley - Team Record - Paul

100 Backstroke - Team Record - Paul

Clay also placed 2nd in the 200 Freestyle and Derek Snyder ('11) and Ian Heacox ('08) delivered individual points as well. 

With all individual points returning except for Chris (3rd) and Ian (12th), the team should be in position to make another run at the CIF Championship next year.