RUSTLERS STEP UP IN A BIG WAY ON DAY TWO OF OEC CHAMPIONSHIPS

Costa Mesa, Calif. - The Golden West College Men's Swim team continued to ride the momentum generated off of the first day of the Orange-Empire Championships into Friday at Orange Coast College into the second day of the three day meet. Buoyed by three gold medal performances, the Rustlers held onto a scant second place lead in the overall team standings. Riverside CC leads after the second day with 615 points but the Rustlers with 431 points are just ahead of Cypress (428) and OCC (421). Saddleback has 176 and Fullerton has 8 points.

 

The finals started off with the 200 medley relay and the GWC team came through with a four second improvement engineered by Jack Wright, Matt Wolf, Boston Frost and Ryder Tonkovich which netted 30 points with the fourth place finish.

 

The 400 individual medley saw the Rustlers gain 62 points overall with freshman Avery Pellicano winning the event in a time of 4:05.02. He led the race from start to finish, weathering a strong breaststroke leg from Cypress' Eoin Tannehill to finish strong in the freestyle portion of the race. Daigo Fujita likely earned a spot in the State meet with his personal best time of 4:14.89 good for 4th overall whereas teammates Gavin Little (4:27.98) and Wolf (4:30.12) came in fifth and sixth respectively.

 

The 100 butterfly gave Tonkovich a chance to show that he is more than just a freestyler as he dropped four seconds to a 51.9 prelims performance and then held on for third place in the final with a time of 52.15.

 

The 200 freestyle was another big race for Golden West as freshman Wyatt Mitchell was impressive in winning the event in a time of 1:38.81 which was nearly six seconds faster than his seasonal best. Teammate Ryan Novak was just edged out for second place but still recorded a quick 1:40.97 to glean third place points.

 

The 100 breaststroke featured sophomore Michael Rodgers who parlayed a fourteenth place seeding into a seventh place finals time as he dropped a massive eight seconds with a final time of 1:02.76.

 

The final event of the day, the 800 yard freestyle relay saw the foursome of Pellicano, Wright, Novak and Mitchell put together an effort of 6:50.96, a seventeen second improvement that yielded a first place finish in the conference and the top seed in the State meet in two weeks. It was a great race with Riverside who led until the last 50 of the third leg of the race but with Novak giving Mitchell a body length lead, the anchor built that to a three second margin of victory.

 

Head Coach Tracy Maurer was very pleased with the team's performances. "We made use of everyone's talents today. The medley relay was a change from the original plan but having the group we actually designated to swim it paid off as we held onto fourth place and the trio of Avery, Ryan and Wyatt were able to perform even better in their individual events later in the meet." Maurer also pointed out the clutch performances of Garrett Gendron, Gavin Abbott, Boston Frost and Szabi Kern who all won their consolation heats in their respective events. "Those are important points and each of those swimmers moved up from their prelims position." His final comments bode well for the Rustlers. "Day One was very good, Day Two was fantastic but Day Three could top them both."