Easy pickings for Blair's boys

Jan. 20, MONTGOMERY AQUATIC CENTER -

Blair's boy swimmers snatched up another easy win yesterday against the Blake Bengals, winning 115-51. The girls suffered a near reversal of scores, losing to the top-ranked Bengal ladies, 68-103. However, with diving scores, Blair won overall 183-154. Their records are now 4-0 and 2-2, boys and girls, respectively.

Assured that they would be leaving with a win, the boys' took the Blake meet as an opportunity to mix up the lineup again. "We were hoping to get people who usually don't swim…to get them experience," junior co-captain Tim Peng explained. Co-captain described yesterday's meet as a "low-stress" competition.

The meet started off with a 1st and 3rd place win in the 200 Medley Relay, in which junior Sam Bullard-Sisken, co-captains junior Yang Yang, senior Robert Feasley and junior Christoff Visscher lead the relay with a 1:47:09 time. Freshman Jeffrey Lin also stole 1st in the 200 Free, four seconds ahead of Blake's swimmer.

Blake's showing at the swim meet revealed few swimmers who could match or out touch even the boys' slightly changed lineup. Blake junior Alex Kim managed to overtake junior co-captain Eddie Qian at various points in the boys' 200 IM, but Qian managed to pull through at the end, out touching Kim by .03 seconds to finish with a 2:06:00 time.

In the girls' events, sophomore Melanie Snail captured 2nd in the 50 Free, with co-captain senior Sally Chang right after her.

Midway through the meet, senior Nicole Poor won girls' diving with a score of 108.20, four points ahead of Blake senior Jess Stewart. Sophomore Caitlin Ludington placed third, receiving a score of 102.90. Blake had no male divers, so junior Michael Willems and junior Franco Segovia placed 1st and 2nd, respectively.

The second half of the meet followed the same trend as the first half, with the boys capturing most of the wins. Seniors David Vuong, Feasley and freshman Matthew Kannan swept in the 500 Free, with times of 5:02:12, 5:05:43 and 5:37:09, respectively, minutes ahead of two of the Blake swimmers.

However, in the second part of the meet, Blair's girls managed to score some points and individual firsts for the team. Snail won the 100 Backstroke with a time of 1:06:59. In addition, freshmen Allison Arai and Molly Branson captured 1st and 2nd in the 100 Breaststroke, finishing with times of 1:14:45 and 1:14:75 a full two seconds ahead of Blake's Nikki Cali.

In the last event of the afternoon, the boys' received 1st and 2nd in the 400 Free Relay, and the girls captured 2nd.

Despite the harsh loss against Blake's girls, the girls' team has been improving drastically since last year, when they had only won one meet. "The Blake girls have been notoriously very strong," explained Feasley. "They are just something [the girls] can't overcome yet…[the girls] can't go from 0 to 100 in a second," he added.

Peng agreed, also attributing the loss partially to the Blake girls' strength. However, he also indicated that several girls had great individual swims. "[Junior co-captain Francesca Blume] got first this time [in the 100 Butterfly], which we didn't expect," he said.

Blair's next swim meet will take place at the Germantown Indoor Swim Center against Sherwood, on Jan. 27, at 9:15 a.m.