Four swimmers from the Palisades-Malibu YMCA traveled north to Santa Clarita for the Southern California Junior Olympics competition last Wednesday-Sunday. The meet started with individual events and ended with relays at Canyon High School. “It’s a fun and exciting meet,” Paly Head Coach Brian Timmerman said. “It is the best age-group swimming meet in California.” Southern California is divided into five sections for swimming. Pacific Palisades and surrounding areas are considered part of the Pacific section. Since there are so many swimmers in Southern California, and more swimmers with fast times, summer JO’s are held in two locations. Mission Viejo had about 200 more swimmers than Santa Clarita this year. “Mission Viejo was a bigger meet which usually leads to faster times,” Timmerman said. “But in this case, Santa Clarita had the faster times.” In the girls’ 13- & 14-year-old 200 Freestyle, for instance, the winning time was 2:06 at Canyon while at Mission Viejo the best time was 2:07.33. In the 100 Free, the winning time at Canyon was 1:00.29 while at Mission Viejo it was 1:01.49. Paly’s Jennifer Tartavull placed 19th at Canyon, but her time would have been good enough for 12th at Mission Viejo. The boys’ 13- & 14-year-old 200 Free Relay team from host Canyon broke a record that had stood since 1981. The following Palisadians swimming for Paly, Westside Aquatics Pasadena and Team Santa Monica all had times fast enough to qualify for JO’s: Samantha Brill, Alexandra Edel, Brian Fishler, Paris Hays, Eric Hamer, Kristen Fujii, Brian Johnson, Jasmine Punch, Danny Fujinaka, Shelby Pascoe, Kimberly and Jennifer Tartavull, Allison Merz, Hannah Kogan and Catherine Wang. Wang placed fifth in the 100 Butterfly, 11th in the 50 Butterfly, and 12th in the 200 Individual Medley. Fujinaka took 11th in the 800 Free, 14th in the 400 Free and 12th in the 200 Free. Edel took 12th in the 200 Breaststroke and 16th in the 100 Breast, Hannah Kogan, who just aged up from the younger group, still showed her speed by placing 15th in the 50 Free and 16th in the 200 Free. Hays’ time in the 50 Free was fast enough to seed him 10th and Merz swam 12th in the 100 Butterfly and 15th in the 50 Free. Brian Johnson placed fifth in the 200 Backstroke. Paly’s relay team of Pascoe, Tartavull, Tartavull and Merz had its best place–ninth–in the 200 Free. The girls took 19 seconds off their seed time in the 200 Medley and 11 seconds off their seed time in the 400 Medley. “They all did well,” Paly assistant coach Caroline Ryan said. “They had five swims in one day, which is a lot, but all of their swims were solid.” Ryan felt they could have done even better had they practiced in a 50 Meter pool. “It’s essential,” she said. “You need to be able to train at least once a week in a 50 meter pool to know how to race it.” Next year, Timmerman wants more of his swimmers to reach JO’s. “I want our team to be better represented,” he said. “We had a lot of kids who just missed the cut this year and hopefully next year they’ll make it.
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