Estancia swims away with victory

Rick Devereux

The battle of the undefeated girls swim teams Wednesday at Costa Mesa

High didn’t have all of the intrigue as expected. Estancia’s Eagles

passed the Mustangs in the Golden West League by pulling out a 95-73

victory.

The win was tainted, however, because Costa Mesa head coach Tim

Postiff sat two varsity swimmers for disciplinary reasons.

“I know that they weren’t expecting it even though [Postiff] wants

to say he isn’t swimming his swimmers, but you know what, I don’t

care,” Estancia Coach Bob Bandaruk said.

Despite being two swimmers short, the meet was fairly close for

most of the afternoon. Costa Mesa was in the lead after six events,

but the Eagles secured the win in the last four events.

“My girls did well. They all had personal bests,” Bandaruk said.

Costa Mesa actually finished with more first-place finishes, six,

than the Eagles, five, but Estancia had more second and third

finishers.

“We have a lot of depth,” Bandaruk said before the meet. “You can

win every race and still lose the meet if you don’t get anybody

giving you points for other finishes.”

With two girls not participating because of disciplinary reasons,

Postiff wasn’t worried about the results.

“We still have the league championship meet [May 6],” Postiff

said. “With other teams competing, it will be an interesting event.”

Bandaruk said that this win will give his team a boost heading

into the league championships at the end of the season.

“I think this is going to make a huge difference for these girls,”

Bandaruk said. “This is going to make them more excited for the

league finals because we finally got the monkey off our back and were

able to beat them.”

Knowing that his team was undermanned, Postiff’s goals were not

about winning or losing this meet. He said he wanted “for better

times from all of the girls and boys that swam and that’s what we

did, so we can’t complain.”