Palo Alto – After spending the entire season gearing up for the Central Coast Section Championships, Live Oak swimmers had just one day to recover from Friday’s preliminaries. As the Acorns took the pool at Stanford’s Avery Aquatic Center on Saturday, they hoped to save the best for last.
Live Oak freshman Steven Rick did just that, swimming a season-best 1:01.93 in the 100-yard breaststroke.
“I trained up for CCS all season,” Rick said, “and I guess it paid off.”
Acorns junior Laura Shope wasn’t nearly as pleased with her performance, despite finishing sixth in her signature event.
“I’d give it a ‘B,'” Shope said when asked to grade her showing at CCS. “My 100 breaststroke I kind of choked on.”
The three Live Oak relay teams that advanced to the finals all finished at or right around their seed, ensuring that there were no real surprises on the final day of the high school swimming season.
The unfortunate development for the Acorns’ program came the day before, when star senior Shea Coleman was disqualified from his final three events for narrowly missing the start of the 50-yard freestyle preliminaries.
The Live Oak boys’ team, the Tri-County Athletic League champion, finished 29th in the 41-team field. TCAL runner-up San Benito, which also saw the meet take an unexpected turn when standout junior Blane Curtice fell ill on the eve of the preliminaries, finished in a tie for 30th place. Bellarmine won its 22nd straight section championship, nearly doubling the number of points of second-place Palo Alto.
The Lady Acorns, who ran away with their third straight TCAL crown the week before, finished tied for 23rd in the 37-team girls’ competition. Archbishop Mitty avenged its 2005 defeat to Palo Alto by winning its fourth girls’ crown in five years.
Rick, a rising star for Live Oak, accomplished the difficult task of setting his season-best mark in the preliminaries and then exceeding it in the consolation finals the next day. The Acorn spoke of beating the 1: 01.98 he posted on Friday in the 100-yard breaststroke.
“It’s tough, but I just saw it was my last swim of CCS, of my freshman year,” Rick said, “so might as well finish it off well.”
Rick finished 11th in the 100-yard breaststroke, but his time was better than that of one of the eight finalists.
Meanwhile, despite taking the No. 4 seed into the 100-yard breaststroke finals, Shope was disappointed that her top performance came the day before. After setting her season-best mark with a 1: 07.66 showing in the preliminaries, the Live Oak junior finished the finals in 1:08.28.
After qualifying for the CCS Championships in each of her first three seasons, Shope said climbing the ladder in hopes of challenging for the breaststroke title next year will be a difficult task.
“It’s going to take a lot of work,” Shope said. “Usually, I’ll take three or four months off for water polo. This year, I’m going to try to swim on the side.”
Both of the Lady Acorns’ relay teams that advanced to the finals held their No. 15 seed. Seniors Ronni Gautschi and Amy Marshall joined sophomore Alisa Pinarbasi and Shope in the meet-opening 200-yard medley relay and finished in 1: 57.47.
Senior Laura Melroy and sophomore Jessica Poon teamed with Pinarbasi and Shope to finish the 400-yard freestyle relay in 3:49.17.
Senior standouts Justin Short and Coleman capped their Live Oak careers with one last race. The four-year swimmers teamed with junior Cameron Peachey and Rick in the 200-yard medley relay. The relay team finished in 1: 43.66, good for 14th place.
