By Gabriel Crosetti @gabrielcrosetti
The Las Positas swim and dive team just finished their conference competition this past weekend, and for the third consecutive season, both the men and women’s teams finished as Coast Conference champions.
In a press release sent out by head coach Jason Craighead, he noted that depth played a large factor in the team’s success as every Las Positas athlete who competed over the weekend placed in at least one event in the three days of the record setting competition.
On the men’s side of things, notable Las Positas swimmers included Emil Graversen who took first place in the 200-yard backstroke, Matt Lee, who took first place in the 50-yard freestyle, 100-yard butterfly and the 100-yard freestyle and Lawrence Li, who placed first in the 200-yard butterfly.
Including the swimmers named above, six additional swimmers on the men’s team qualified to advance to the state meet which is scheduled to be held May 4-6. Those six men will be Michael Eckles, Ryan Eckles, Anthony Jhong, Addison McLaggin, Jonny Stalie and Caleb Wagner.
When asked about his expectations for state, team captain Ryan Eckles said, “We have nine guys representing the state team and I know almost everyone’s in an individual event so I know that will be fun and we’re just trying to jump up there. I know we’re a small school compared to the Orange County and all of the L.A. teams, so it’ll be exciting to see what we can do.”
Coach Craighead echoed that sentiment by saying, “Our men are looking forward to some good competition. They like to rise to the challenge, and they’re definitely going to have a challenge in front of them.”
The women’s team dominated just like the men over the weekend as Paris Sinclair took first place in the 500-yard freestyle and the 1650-yard freestyle, and Alex Torrez placed first in the women’s 50-yard freestyle.
In addition to Sinclair and Torrez, Mackenzie Bammer, Amaya Batiza, Nicolle Glover, Gabriela Perez, Aileen Sullivan and Julia Vares all qualified to compete in the state championship meet.
“Our women are also looking to compete, but they also just want to be fast and focus more on personal efforts. They have individual goals which they would like to achieve, which lead to our team goals,” Craighead said.
With all the strong performances that led to another conference championship for the Las Positas Swim and Dive program, several school records were broken in the process.
Individual records were set by Anthony John who broke his own record in the 100 breaststroke and Paris Sinclair who broke her own record in the 500 freestyle.
Four relay records were set as well by Anthony Jhong, Emil Graversen, Lawrence Li and Matt Lee, who broke the record in the men’s 800-yard freestyle relay. Alex Torrez, Mackenzie Bammer, Gaby Perez and Paris Sinclair also broke the school record in the women’s 200-yard medley relay.
Sinclair, Perez, Torrez and Amaya Batiza set the new record in the women’s 400-yard freestyle relay, and Sinclair, Batiza, Perez, and Sullivan also set a school record in the women’s 800-yard free relay.
In total, six new school records were set by Hawks swimmers while Li and Sinclair took home awards for best swimmers of the meet.