Coming out of two weeks of intense training, the Bakersfield College swim teams held their water with a 12-event win against Cuesta and L.A. Pierce in their home meet on March 25.
The men dominated early on in the 400-yard medley relay, with a 5.4-second victory over Pierce. They won seven races total at the meet.
“It feels great after coming out of two weeks of hell-week practice, to come back and do that, it feels pretty good for us,” said Ryan Farrer, 200-yard BC individual medley record holder.
Qualifying first in the men’s 200 individual butterfly with a time of 2:10.91, Farrer came in ahead of teammate Paul Steele and ahead of Cuesta swimmer Derrick Graham, by 6.6 seconds.
“When you go to these invitations you have certain guys you know from other teams that you kind of have a rivalry with,” said Farrer. “Every time I race the butterfly, I want to beat this one guy from Cuesta, that’s my rival, and that’s how I get my times down too.”
The men of Cuesta left with four event wins, three for the men and one for the women. Men’s captain Evan Norton took both the men’s 1000-yard in 10:19.83 seconds and 500-yard freestyle in 4:58.20, over both Bakersfield and Pierce.
“Today was definitely a strong day, it felt good,” said Norton. “We’ve been training really hard, so it’s kind of nice to see that the times are still decent even though we’ve been training so hard.”
The BC women took second at the meet with a total of five wins in the 50- and 100-yard freestyle, as well as the 100-yard butterfly, the 100-yard backstroke and the 400-yard freestyle relay.
BC women’s freestyle sprinter Katie Lopes took both the 50-yard freestyle, and 100-yard freestyle and was a member of the winning 400-yard freestyle relay along with Brigitte Alexander, Franchesca Wyatt and Brandelyn Storms.
“I won both my races, and I got the same times that I got at conference last year,” said Lopes.
“I made it to state last year and I placed ninth, so I’m looking at, at least top three this year.”
The L.A. Pierce women’s team took six events in total, with Samantha Elam winning all three distance freestyle races.
Charlie Pike, BC swim coach, spoke about his training tactics for the season after the meet.
“Our focus the whole season has been on conference,” said Pike. “They are all really tired right now, but that’s kind of where I want them, just so we can taper down for conference.”
“The guys won, the girls beat Cuesta but loss to L.A. Pierce, but that’s fine. We’ll see how it pans out at conference.”
The Western State Conference meet is scheduled April 21-23 at L.A. Valley College. Before that, BC will compete April 1 in a three-team meet at L.A. Valley, and on April 8 in a four-team meet at Cuesta.
Pike said, “I think our girls should be able to take Ventura and L.A. Valley. The guys are really evenly matched with L.A. Valley.”
Now in its fourth season since the swim teams’ reinstatement in 2008, Pike said, “We’ve come a really long way.
“For a newer program, competing with all these guys is a pretty big deal.”
“I think that Charlie is doing great with it, and I think that he’s proud that we have a lot of Bakersfield kids. I think he is a great coach, and we are getting a lot of great swimmers coming in,” said Lopes.