Talent pool is getting deeper

Mike Sciacca

With a Pacific Coast League swim meet with Corona del Mar High still

a few hours away, members of the Laguna Beach boys’ 200-meter relay

team began to talk the talk.

By 3:30 p.m. that day, March 30, the foursome had backed it all

up.

Competing in the first race of the boys’ varsity meet, Laguna’s

200 medley relay team comprising the senior foursome of Shawn

Pfendler, Trevor Frimond, Adam Kaplan and Ryan Fair, swam to a

school-record time of 1:48.85 at the Laguna pool.

The event was no contest, as Laguna outswam the Sea Kings by a

longshot.

“It was an incredible swim,” Laguna Coach Rick McKee said of the

feat. “They beat CdM by half a pool’s length. They were outstanding.”

The time also qualified the 200 medley relay team for the

consolation finals of the CIF-Southern Section Championships, which

will be held at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach in mid-May.

The previous school record for the event was 1:49.05, set two years ago.

Pfendler, then a sophomore, also was on that team.

Call it a hunch, a premonition, a gut feeling, but whatever it

was, the talk of setting a new record was mutual between the Laguna

swimmers.

Pfendler said his teammates had come up to him during class the

morning of the meet, ensuring him that they’d set the record.

“Adam told me we’d do it during third period, and Trevor and Ryan

said the same thing to me in fourth period AP economics class,”

Pfendler said. “Trevor and Ryan both told me, not knowing that Adam

had said the same thing to me, the period before.”

In a breakdown of the 1:48.85 time, Pfendler led off with a 28.17

in the backstroke -- his fastest split of the year, followed by a

32.56 by Frimond in the breaststroke.

Kaplan then went 25.46 in the butterfly, and by looking at the

electronic touch pad located poolside, the team knew the school

record was within reach.

“We just told Ryan that he had to book,” Pfendler said. “We were

so far ahead at that point already that Ryan had nobody to race

against but himself. We just told him to go big.”

And Fair did, turning in a 22.66 sprint, which secured the school

record.

As seniors, the four want to leave their mark on the school record

book.

“The way we figure it, it’s still early in the season, and we feel

that we will only get faster,” Pfendler said. “We broke the record

once, and we want to do it again. We want to come back to the school

after we’ve graduated and still see our names in the record books.”