Boys' swimming takes easy win against Bengals

DEC. 17, MARTIN LUTHER KING SWIM CENTER-

The Blair boys' swim team earned an easy victory today against the Blake Bengals, scoring 107 points to the Bengals' 61 and bringing their divisional record to 2-0. The girls fell to Blake with a score of 72-99, bringing their record to 1- 1. The boys swam a strong meet, taking either first, second, or both in all but one event, while the girls' downfall was their lack of first place victories.

The boys took a strong lead from the start, leading by ten points after the first event and by 20 after the second. They outscored Blake in all but two of the 11 events, resulting in a win by almost 50 points. Even with two disqualifications, the boys had no problem beating the Bengals.

The Blazer boys took eight first place victories during the meet. Senior captain Bryan Erickson and sophomores Tim Peng, Michael Willems and Eddie Tang started off a seven-event-long streak of victories by winning the first event, the 200 Medley Relay.

Junior David Goode took an easy first place in the 200 Free, by about 5 seconds, followed in the next event by another easy victory by junior Cole Brown in the 200 Individual Medley, where he won by 10 seconds. One of Blair's top swimmers, sophomore Yang Yang, beat Cole's time but was disqualified for an illegal kick.

Blair then took four more consecutive victories. Tang took first place in the 50 Free, which was followed by senior diving captain Sam Silsbee's winning diving score. Next, Blazers swept the 100 Fly, with Vuong in first, senior captain Tyler Wilchek in second and Willems in third. The Bengals were nowhere near the three swimmers, and their fastest swimmer finished 5 seconds behind Willems. Finally, Erickson took first in the 100 Free and junior Chris Kidwell took first in the 100 Breast. Yang also disqualified in this event, so even though his time was over 10 seconds faster than Kidwell's, he did not earn points for Blair.

According to senior captain Anna Chiplis, Yang's disqualifications were due to a rule discrepancy between his private swim club, which follows Potomac Valley Swimming (PVS) rules, and the MCPS swimming rules. "For PVS, you can do a butterfly kick on the breast stroke pull out, but it's different for high school swimming - you can't do it," said Chiplis. The rule was recently changed in PVS, creating confusion in this meet.

The girls' team fared far worse than the boys', and was barely able to scrounge up two first place victories. The team of freshmen Melanie Snail and Rachel Nicholson, senior captain Kelsey Dean and senior Diana Frey took first in the 200 Medley Relay, and Snail took another victory in the 100 Back. Although the team placed second in nearly all the other events, their deficit in victories allowed the Bengals to seize the lead, which they never relinquished, after the third event. The gap between the two scores only grew as the meet continued, ending in a 27 point loss for the Blazers.

One key factor that may have disadvantaged the girls was the absence of their coach, David Swaney, who was in Bolivia monitoring elections. According to junior captain Sally Chang, this caused the meet to be "very hectic." She explained, "[Swaney's] usually the one who organizes all the captains and tells us what to do."

Chiplis said that the captains had put together the swim rosters, but since their last practice before the meet was canceled due to the early release last week, the captains held an emergency lunch meeting. As a result, most of the swimmers did not know what they were swimming, leading to more confusion and last-minute additions of swimmers. "There are people who left early or weren't able to swim their events, so we had people step up and take their place," Chiplis said. Overall, she felt that the girls' team did better than expected, considering the circumstances. "We thought we'd be destroyed, but we held our own," she said.

Blair's next meet will be the Division II Relay Carnival at Martin Luther Swim Center on Saturday, Jan. 7 at 9:15 a.m.