Make that two in a row. The Sobrato High girls swimming team repeated as Blossom Valley League champions last Friday and Saturday at Gunderson High. The Bulldogs totaled 427 points to edge Piedmont Hills by four points in one of the closest team finishes in recent memory.
“It was a great accomplishment,” said Nina Aliamus, who swam several events to help pile up points for the Bulldogs. “We lost some really good seniors off last year’s team, but we gained some talented freshmen, and they stepped up. We had a lot of people step up and take charge.”
Sobrato was up by two points heading into the final event, the 400-yard freestyle relay. Fortunately for the Bulldogs, their relay team was far and away the best quartet in the field.
“We pulled through and it was such an amazing moment,” Aliamus said. “The pressure was on us to win the event.”
And that’s exactly what the team of Aliamus, Helena Batey, Amanda Jackson and Annie Ly did, scorching the field in a time of 3 minutes, 49.47 seconds, four seconds faster than Piedmont Hills. The quartet had already hit a Central Coast Section qualifying time in the event along with the 200 free relay.
Freshman sensation Annie Ly has section-qualifying times in the 100 butterfly and 200 individual medley, and Aliamus the 50 free. On the boys side, sophomore Jacob Hatch is headed to CCS for the 100 back and senior Clayton Sawyer the 100 free. For Live Oak, Kai Leong and Karrine Leong made the CCS cut times in the 100 backstroke.
Sobrato senior Kylie Katsuyoshi dominated the girls diving event, totaling 432.35 points. Aliamus barely missed out on qualifying for the 100 free, with a season-best of 56.41 seconds, just 2/100ths of a second off the cut time. However, Aliamus had a particularly strong performance in every race, a testament to her consistency as she closes out her high school career at the CCS Meet, which starts on May 11.
“It’s pretty special to go for two relay teams,” she said. “Swimming together has really brought the girls together in a way that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.”
Ly has proven to be a force in the 100 fly and 200 IM, and if she keeps on improving, contending—not just making—the CCS Finals is a likely probability in the next year or so. For Sawyer, day one of the BVAL Finals proved to be a now or never scenario.
Sawyer, who had already made the decision to skip Saturday’s finals to attend a beach lifeguard academy training program in San Luis Obispo—something that was required since Sawyer will be relocating to San Luis Obispo in the summer to work and attend Cuesta College in the fall—had one last chance to hit a Central Coast Section qualifying time in the 100-yard freestyle.
And that’s exactly what Sawyer did—by the slimmest of margins. Sawyer’s time of 49.93 seconds was just under the cutoff mark of 49.99, and it was a clutch performance in his final chance to make sectionals.
“I was stoked when I found out I made it,” Sawyer said. “It was my best time, but sometimes the stopwatch time is different than when you touch the pad. I checked the time later when they posted it and saw that I had done it. It was great since I had been working on that since freshman year.”
Saywer pulled out all of the stops to qualify, shaving his body the night before—it took him two hours to complete—and wearing a hi-tech swim suit in the hopes to shave precious tenths of a second off his time.
“It was my last race so I had to go all out,” he said.
Sawyer borrowed a Jammer swim suit from Hatch’s older brother, Jarod, a former Bulldogs standout who is swimming at Cal.
“The Jammer suits are really small and tight, and they take about 15 minutes to put on,” Sawyer said. “You want them to be as tight as you can because you’re way more dynamic going into the water. You definitely can break a sweat just putting them on, but it’s worth it.”
From shaving to wearing the Jammer, Sawyer noticed a difference, both mentally and physically.
“Once you get in the pool, it’s all on you to swim the way you’re capable of,” he said. “You know you’ve done everything to be as fast as possible.”
Speaking of fast, Hatch was just that. The super sophomore hit his CCS cutoff time in the 100 back Friday, and he’s seemingly peaking at the perfect time.
“It was a do or die thing Friday with trying to qualify,” he said. “When I hit the wall, they said I swam it in 56 seconds. I knew that was a CCS time, but I didn’t want to get too excited until it became official. When they posted the time (56 seconds), I had all this energy and sense of accomplishment that I finally did it.”
At the end of the meet Saturday, Hatch did handstands in the warm-up/cool down pool. It was a reward for enduring a six-plus hour meet for the second straight day. Hatch’s dad, Jason, is big into CrossFit and has taught Jacob how to do a handstand.
“It’s fun trying to do it in the pool, trying to walk and stuff,” Jacob said. “It helps you with your balance and core strength.”
Hatch credits Jarod for helping him develop into a strong swimmer, and yet Jacob is quietly coming into his own and making a name for himself. For Live Oak’s top swimmers, the present and future came in the form of Karrine Leong, who nailed her CCS cut in the 100 back after several tries from the start of the season.
That happened Friday, and the next day Leong further lowered her PR by half a second to close out the meet in style. When Leong hit the wall Friday in the 100 back, she didn’t think it was a quality swim.
“I was really surprised at the time because I messed up on my turns,” she said.
Brother Kai Leong nailed a PR in the 100 back, finishing in 55 seconds. Leong also won his heat in the 50 free, and though it wasn’t a qualifying time, a PR qualifies as a successful performance. The Leongs have one more high school meet to go before Kai heads off to college.
The two have shared numerous memories in the pool, and last weekend they got to watch each other produce sensational performances. Kai, who also swam the 200 free and 200 medley relays, was overjoyed that Karrine nailed the cutoff time in the 100 backstroke.
“She’s been waiting for that the whole season,” he said.
“Swimming makes us closer,” Karrine said. “We connect because we have the same events and know what it’s like to swim the events,”
The Leongs—like the rest of the swimmers in the field—had to be mindful of keeping their muscles warm. They spent plenty of time in the warm-up/cool down pool to prevent from getting stiff.
“If that happens, you jump in the pool and everything locks up,” Kai said.
On the diving side, Katsuyoshi shined, repeating as league champion in impressive fashion. The diving finals took place two days before the start of the swim finals at Santa Teresa High. Katsuyoshi, who has earned a scholarship to dive at the University of Denver, didn’t advance to the CCS Finals last year after not finishing among the top 16 in the preliminary round.
As a sophomore, Katsuyoshi took 12th place. This season, the senior is aiming for a top-10 finish. At the high school level, divers must complete a front, back, reverse, inward and twister dive. In addition, they must complete one more dive from any of those categories for a score.
“Reverse dives are probably my strength,” said Katsuyoshi, who easily qualified above the CCS qualifying mark of 280 points.
Even though Katsuyoshi has only been diving for four years, she made a seamless transition to the sport after competing in gymnastics for several years. In fact, the majority of the six members of Sobrato’s dive team were on the same gymnastics club team before entering high school.
“The other girls on the team are all ex-gymnasts, so it’s funny how we all transitioned from gymnastics into diving,” she said.
In high school competition, Katsuyoshi is only allowed to dive off a 1-meter springboard. When she’s competing at the club level, however, Katsuyoshi sometimes dives off of a 10-meter board. After not advancing out of the CCS preliminary round last season, Katsuyoshi was motivated to not let that happen again.
“It pushed me to learn new dives and improve the ones I already was doing,” she said. “I try to stay calm and focus on the corrections my coach gives me.”
