RELAY WIN, MITCHELL VICTORY HIGHLIGHT DAY TWO STATE MEET

Costa Mesa, Calif. - The Golden West College Men's Swim team finished a productive day at the California State Swim and Dive Championships by winning the final event of the second day: the 800 yard Free Relay. With the win and some other stellar swimming, the Rustlers moved up in the team standings to seventh overall with 173 points. American River leads the field with 302 points followed by Sierra (294), Riverside (264), Mt. Sac (257), Cuesta (205) and DeAnza (183). Diablo Valley (148), San Mateo (145) and Orange
Coast (129) round out the top ten.

The first event that the Rustlers scored in on Friday was the 400 Individual Medley. Avery Pellicano put forth a 4:02.87 effort to pick up seventh place. Perfect pacing to start and a blazing 53.9 freestyle split were keys to Avery's lifetime best in the event. Daigo Fujita also swam a well-timed race as he finished 14th with a 4:12.58 to continue his remarkable results this meet.

Sprinter Ryan Tonkovich got a second chance to swim the 100 Butterfly when he moved up from his first alternate position to grab 15th place points with a 51.75 time, almost a half of a second faster than his morning swim.

The 200 yard Freestyle was the Rustlers' most dominant event. Wyatt Mitchell, coming in as the top seed, swam an aggressive race and led from start to finish to win his signature event. His final time was 1:38.45 greatly aided by taking the field out in a quick 47.7 in the first 100. Mitchell established a new school record as well. His teammate, Ryan Novak, who qualified second off the morning prelims, hung around and out-split Mitchell the second 100 (50.50 to 50.73) and broke the magic 1:40 barrier for the first time ever, recording a 1:39.47 to gain the silver medal.

The real fireworks were saved for the last event. As the pool lights came on in the evening, the top ranked Rustlers knew winning the event would be no easy task. Their main competition boiled down to Cuesta, OEC rival Riverside, and perennial State champion Sierra.

The race started off predictably with Cuesta's lock for Swimmer of the Meet, Grant Huston, leading off with a 1:35 effort that just missed the State record for the individual 200 free. That gave Cuesta at least a five second lead on the rest of the field. Pellicano swam a poised race in 1:41.6 and a 3rd place position after the first leg, a second behind RCC and over two seconds ahead of Sierra. Jack Wright went second for GWC and split a 1:44.4 to hold serve and handed off a fourth place spot but less than a second behind both RCC and Sierra with Cuesta maintaining its six second lead. Novak dove in knowing he had some work to do to close the gap but that's exactly what he did with a 1:40.5 mark and back up to 3rd place. What had changed was that everyone had made up the gap on Cuesta after three legs as RCC took over the lead, Cuesta was still second and GWC and Sierra less than a second behind. Mitchell took the first 100 out strong but was sitting in second halfway through his leg chasing the leading RCC team and trying to hold off Sierra just a half of a second behind. 50 yards
later, the race was even closer as both GWC and Sierra had passed RCC as less than a second separated the three teams as Cuesta was fading to fourth. The Sierra anchor actually pulled even with about 30 yards to go but Mitchell aced the last flip turn to come back in the event's second fastest split (1:38.08) and the Rustlers won the race with a 6:44.64 effort. Sierra finished second (6:46.19) with a 1:39.21 final leg and RCC gained the bronze at 6:47.59.

Head Coach Tracy Maurer was all smiles as he got to hand out medals to his terrific foursome. "They all did their job. The 800 free relay is a delicate operation and the swimmers have to balance their poise and their excitement but when it works, it works." Golden West set a new school record and bettered their entry time by over six seconds. "We take a lot of pride in our program and our distance guys have put in the focused work this season. This result was not a surprise because we prepared for the moment. Hats off to those other three schools. That was about as exciting as an 800 free relay can get."

The final day of competition finishes up at Orange Coast with preliminary swims starting at 9:30 and finals moved up to 4:00 in the afternoon.