RUSTLER SWIMMERS START STRONG AT CONFERENCE SWIM CHAMPIONSHIPS

The Golden West College Men's Swim team started the first day of the Orange-Empire Conference Championships held at Orange Coast College in fine form. Five events were contested on the first of a three day event and Golden West scored big in every one of them.

After the first day Riverside CC is on top with 282 points followed by GWC at 193, just three points ahead of a strong Cypress team with 190. Always formidable Orange Coast lurks in fourth with 167 points and Saddleback College is fifth with 68.

 

The first swim event was the 200 yard freestyle relay. The foursome of Wyatt Mitchell, Ryder Tonkovich, Avery Pellicano and Ryan Novak dropped four seconds from their seed time and moved up to a second place tie with OCC in a time of 1:25.27.

 

The 500 free was a very strong event for the Rustlers as they had seven different swimmers score points to total 72 for that one event. Championship finalists included Pellicano, second at 4:34.92, Mitchell third at 4:36.84, Novak fourth at 4:37.42 and Daigo Fujita eighth at 4:52.44.

 

The 200 individual medley saw the duo of Matt Wolf and Gavin Little pick up seventh and eighth place overall with times of 2:02.88 and 2:03.48 respectively.

Tonkovich maintained his third place seeding in the 50 free as he dropped his entry time in the prelims and again in the finals for a final time of 21.25.

 

Finally, the 400 medley relay finished the day off and once again the Rustlers impressed the crowd with a 13 second time improvement to come in third overall (3:34.57). Novak led off with the backstroke leg, Wolf was the breaststroker, Pellicano the fly leg and Tonkovich finished the freestyle position.

 

Head Coach Tracy Maurer commented on the meet in general. "This conference is really fast and the talent is deep as well. We were pleased with our performances today but have to keep the pressure up the next two days. The relays were outstanding and we hope they qualify for the State meet in all of them. Very unusual to see three swimmers come off the 200 free relay and swim the championship finals of the 500 free. We are swimming tough."

 

Day Two starts with preliminaries on Friday morning with the first race at 9:30.