Dolphins Swim to Three-peat

In the end, not having a pool to practice in only strengthened the resolve of the Palisades High swim team. Coach Maggie Nance spent most of the season scrambling to find places for her swimmers to practice. Somehow it worked. The Dolphins’ varsity girls managed to win their third consecutive City Section swim title and 19th overall last Wednesday at Los Angeles Memorial Pool while the varsity boys, who took eighth last spring, moved up a spot to seventh. Despite not winning one individual event, the girls had enough to outscore runner-up Cleveland, 291-246 ‘. Depth is what made the difference. In some strokes, like the 50 and 500 freestyle, Palisades qualified four swimmers for the finals and consolation rounds. In the 200 freestyle, 200 individual medley, 100 butterfly and 100 freestyle, Palisades had three swimmers. “I’m very proud of the girls, considering everything we went through this year,” said Nance, who calculated that if each girl matched her prelims place and if they won the relays the Dolphins should win by 12 points. The final margin, however, was even more decisive than that. Heading into the first event, the 200 medley relay, Palisades’ Hayley Hacker, Mariah Young, Alyssa Machida and Kristin Fujii were seeded second behind Cleveland and the Dolphins’ foursome finished second. In the 200 freestyle, Pali’s Ana Silka moved up a place to third but senior Jasmine Punch dropped a place to sixth and Shelby Pascoe took seventh. Palisades started to take control of the meet in the 50 freestyle, where junior Nicole Washington took second, Lemoine placed third, Hannah Kogan swam seventh and Emily Newman was ninth–giving the Dolphins a 30-point lead. Cleveland made up 10 points in diving, where Pali didn’t have a competitor. “When the pool gets built, we’ll be able to have diving,” Nance said. Palisades had four girls qualify for the 500 freestyle to Cleveland’s two and the Dolphins started to pull away, taking third (Pascoe), fourth (Silka), sixth (Jasmine Punch) and 11th (Perelshteyn). In the 200 yard freestyle relay, Palisades was seeded second and maintained its place as Washington, Emily Newman, Kampe and Lemoine dropped four seconds from their prelim time and missed first by two-tenths of a second. Venice swimmer and former Paul Revere student Andi Murez broke the city record (58.00) for the backstroke with a time of 57.48, pushing Pali swimmers Fujii and Hacker to personal best times, taking second and third respectively. Palisades’ varsity boys are rebuilding and the highest place finishes were by freshman Shervin Ghaffari who took fourth in the breaststroke, junior Kim Charles, fifth in the butterfly, and sophomore John Cullen, who swam a personal best in the 100 backstroke to take sixth. Ghaffari, who swam all year as a fresh/soph swimmer was moved up during city prelims and easily qualified for the finals. The fresh/soph boys and girls took first in numerous events, which also bodes well for Nance’s team next year, if pool space can be found. Nance will be losing senior girls, Fujii, Kent, Punch and boys Carl Kaplan and Andrew Le. Both Kaplan and Le placed in the consolation rounds at the meet.