The Golden Valley swim team hosted Highland High School in its first official swim meet of the 2018-19 season at the Santa Clarita Aquatics Center on Wednesday.
Highland’s girls varsity team set the tone in the 200-yard medley relay, defeating Golden Valley’s A team (Harrietta Trinh, Zoe MacDonald, Julia Lamon and Hazel Aguiluz) by a little under two seconds with a time of 2 minutes, 16.23 seconds.
The Grizzlies boys A team (Victor Rodriguez, Genesis Pagaran, William Han and Kevin Nguyen) answered by winning the 200-yard medley relay with slightly over a 12-second margin of victory, clocking 1:58.86.
At the end of the day, both the boys and girls team fell to Highland, losing 739 to 676 and 1,039 to 777, respectively.
“I feel really good,” said Golden Valley head coach Whitney Cox. “My kids worked very hard. We have been doing a lot of new technique work and it’s really paying off. They look so much better, I even hear that from the staff at the pool and they say they look the best they have ever looked. Their morale is up and they are performing as I expect. They are doing really well.”
Golden Valley’s River Lucas took first-place in the 200-yard freestyle, leading the whole way to win by more than 14 seconds with a time of 2:25.73.
Sebastian Lopez and William Han followed with a one-two finish in the 100-yard butterfly, clocking in times of 1:13.48 and 1:17.93, respectively. The third-place Highland finisher came in five seconds later than Han.
Grizzlies freshman Diego Donigian swam a sub-six minute 500-yard freestyle race, coming in at 5:58.76 and was part of the first-place 200-yard freestyle relay team along with Pagaran, Rodriguez and Nguyen, who finished in 1:46.65.
“Diego is great,” Cox said about the freshman swimmer. “He swims for Paseo Aquatics and has a JO time for the 500 free. He did excellent today and swam that under a six-minute. I’m really excited about what he brings to the team.”
Pagaran was the other Grizzlies boys swimmer to win a relay and an individual race, winning the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:19.48.
Girls swimmer Julia Lamon ended the day with two first-place finishes, winning the 200-yard individual medley and the 100-yard backstroke with times of 2:37.86 and 1:15.37, respectively.
Hazel Aguiluz joined Lamon after winning both the 50 and 100-yard freestyle races in 29.09 and 1:07.70, respectively. Aguiluz bested the second-place finisher in both races by two seconds or more.
Golden Valley hosts Burroughs at the Santa Clarita Aquatics Center at 3 p.m. on Wednesday.
“Honestly, just to teach them,” said of her objective against Highland. “To have the lessons and to have my upperclassmen step up to help the lower classmen. To learn that this is nothing to freak out about. Everybody is a little nervous, but you can be nervous together and get pumped up from that.”
