By Tadzio Garcia
The swim and dive team recorded 18 individual records while competing against 340 swimmers at the Chaffey Invitational last Friday and Saturday in Riverside City College.
“It was another great weekend. We’re still seeing the best times.
“One focus has been aggressive head-to-head racing that has helped improve our performances overall as well,” Head Coach Erik Matheson said.
The Huskies, 2-0 in South Coast Conference play, will be at El Camino College Friday at 12:30 p.m. to face the Warriors and Pasadena City College.
El Camino and Pasadena are both 0-2 in the SCC.
Jacquleine Leal, Kimberly Morales and Christina Burrola splashed to three individual personal records each.
Jennifer Flores and Crystal Garibaldo swam to two individual personal records each.
Felicia Ballesteros also set two personal records and cut approximately 12 seconds from her 200 individual medley.
“I worked to improve my game by focusing on my weaknesses this past week and will do the same this week,” Ballesteros said.
The team of Kimberly Fierros, Ashley Jauregui, Veronica Orantes and Alexandra Gonzalez set a personal record in the 800-meter freestyle relay.
Known as the ELAC “A” team, the swimmers knocked off 7.85 seconds off their previous record.
Jauregui was feeling under the weather, but still came in to help set the “A” team’s personal best.
“I swam the fastest I could despite being sick all week, because I want to be here and improve to get better,” Jauregui said.
The ELAC “B” team also swam a personal record in the 800 free relay. It included Yazandra Martinez, Leal, Morales and Garibaldo. They swam almost a second faster.
Martinez also scored seven points for the Huskies in the 1-meter diving event.
The Huskies scored 56 overall points to take 10th place in a field of 13 teams, faring better than last year’s results in this meet.
Martinez placed No. 11 out of 15 divers.
She scored 66.85 points and was edged by Melissa Russell of Fullerton College by 5.05 points for 10th place.
“We will work on her hurdle and backpress and the basics to her approach, back and front,” Elias Rocha, dive coach said.
Other individual scoring for the Huskies in came from Leal in the 50-yard breaststroke and Denise Burrola in the 100-meter butterfly. Jauregui scored in the long distance 1650 freestyle race.