Boys’ Swimming: Lin goes back-to-back
RIVERSIDE — Tyler Lin won the 100-yard breaststroke for the second straight year Saturday night at the CIF Southern Section Division 1 swimming finals.
Later on, after the meet ended, the Princeton-bound senior and his CdM teammates laughed as they posed with a team runner-up plaque that wasn’t theirs.
“Hey, whose is that?” CdM Coach Barry O’Dea asked his swimmers. “Why do you have it?”
JSerra’s girls let CdM’s boys borrow their hardware and take pictures with it.
“Goofballs,” O’Dea said. “Hey, you’re going to [tick] off their coaches. Give it back.”
Lin and his CdM teammates do know how to have fun. And the CdM boys also did more than respectable, finishing in fifth place for the second straight year.
Newport Harbor’s boys, buoyed by top-four finishes in both freestyle relays, placed ninth overall.
University won the Division 1 boys’ title for the second straight year.
Lin might be a goofball out of the water, but he’s a competitor inside. He bounced back big-time after qualifying third in the breaststroke at preliminaries. It was the first time he had failed to win the race in two years.
At finals, Lin dropped more than a second to lower his school record time to a 54.30. Judd Howard of University, who had qualified first, placed second in finals with a 54.98.
“I knew I had to go out a lot faster and just really compete with those guys,” said Lin, who considers Howard a friendly rival as both compete in club for AquaZots. “I just dug deep.”
Lin also placed fourth in the 200 individual medley in 1:48.58, as one of three Sea Kings in the event. Senior Justin Hanson was fifth in 1:49.94, and junior Tim Hanson was ninth in 1:51.56.
“We were looking forward to that race the whole season,” said Justin Hanson, bound for Northwestern. “It was nice to have three of our guys step up and make the ‘A’ final. It’s always nice to have guys that you’ve been training with the whole year in the championship final with you. It kind of gives you confidence.”
Newport Harbor certainly showed the confidence with its relays. The Sailors’ quartet of Dominik Folkner, Hayden Hemmens, Sawyer Farmer and Jason Trzeciecki placed second to Valencia of Valencia in the 200 free relay, touching in 1:24.71. They then placed fourth in the 400 free relay, breaking their own school record time from Sunset League finals with a 3:04.30.
“What we said before the meet started today was we had four goals for this relay,” said the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo-bound Hemmens. “[We wanted to] win [the event], beat University, break the record again and don’t get [disqualified].”
Three out of four wasn’t bad. But why the desire to beat University, which finished sixth in the 400 free relay?
“We’ve always been racing next to each other in the 4x100,” said Folkner, also Cal Poly bound. “They beat us at Foothill Games and at prelims of CIF. [But] we got them when it counted the most.
Individual events were more hit or miss for the Sailors. Folkner tied for sixth in the 50 free in 21.34, and ninth in the 100 free in 46.62. He said he was a bit disappointed after swimming a bit slower than his preliminaries time in each event, and breaking neither of the school records in those events, which was a goal heading into finals.
“I don’t know,” Folkner said. “It just didn’t feel as good in the water. I’m not sure [why].”
Hemmens finished seventh in the 200 freestyle, in 1:39.22. He was also 11th in the 100 back, in 51.33.
The CdM medley relay was strong, as Ethan Archer, Lin, Justin Hanson and Ashton Jajonie placed fourth in 1:33.59. Hanson finished fifth in the 100 butterfly in 49.95 for CdM.
Among swimmers competing in consolation finals, CdM’s Tim Hanson was 11th in the 500 free in 4:32.81 and Taylor Cortens was 13th in the 200 IM, in 1:51.60. Archer was 17th in the butterfly in 51.68 and Jajonie was 18th in the 50 free in 22.49.
O’Dea also highlighted the 200 free relay, which featured four water polo guys in Jajonie, Jon Polos, Foster Hoose and Tanner Roletter. They placed 13th in 1:26.82.
Losing a senior leader like Lin will be tough, O’Dea said. But Lin has one more high school meet to go. He is expected to compete in the breaststroke at next weekend’s first CIF State Championships in Fresno.
“We’ve counted on him for a lot, ever since he was a freshman,” O’Dea said of Lin. “At the beginning, he wasn’t expecting to carry that kind of weight, but he kind of embraced it at the end of that year. As we’ve moved forward, he’s kind of become known for being that guy that was going to come through when we needed him to.”
Newport Harbor’s relay swimmers also indicated they plan to compete at state, and Hemmens has qualified with an at-large time in the 200 free along with Folkner in the 100 free.
