Returning from the state meet with an overall placement of 14th in the men’s and eighth in the woman’s, the Bakersfield College Swim Team has shown a substantial improvement over last year’s state meet.

“That’s our highest finishing since I’ve been here,” said BC swim coach Charlie Pike.

Held at East L.A. College from April 28-30, Pike explained the overall feeling felt by the team at the meet.

“They were pretty nervous, but it was a big indoor venue, and it had the whole championship deal to it which was really nice,” he said.

BC’s Franchesca Wyatt took home four medals for the women’s team, including placing six in state in the women’s 1,650 freestyle with a time of 18:13:41 seconds.

Women’s captain Brigette Alexander took sixth in the 100-yard butterfly at 1:00.24, seventh in the 50-yard butterfly at 27.36, and eighth in the 50-yard freestyle at 25.24.

Alexander also placed in the top eight in the 400-yard freestyle relay with Wyatt, Katie Lopes and Brandelyn Storms.

Alexander said concerning the meet, “It was a huge deal to do even better at state than we did at conference.”

The men’s results ranked them 14th at the meet, with Brian Collier placing fourth in the men’s 200-yard breaststroke at 2:04.54, and 1:51.31 in the men’s 200-yard individual medley, which placed him third in the race.

BC swimmer Matt McDonnell said concerning the meet, “It was an indoor pool which always has its problems with ventilation, but it’s still a pretty good pool.

“State was a little lackluster, I was a little tired,” said Mcdonnell about his conditioning, “I guess my taper didn’t hold on as long as I wanted it to.

“I held right around my best times,” said Mcdonnell.

Orange Coast College took first in both the men and women’s meets.

Pike commented on the Orange Coast team.

“They have a pretty big crew there,” he said. “They’re traditionally one of the stronger teams, they came through again. They got a lot of kids coming from all over the place there. I think they have a lot of four-year transfers that were coming to JC this year. It was good for our kids to see that, too.”

At the Western State Conference meet April 21-23 at LA Valley College, BC placed second in the men’s competition and the women finished fourth. During the state swim, BC beat all of its conference teams.

In the men’s 200-yard individual medley, Collier set a new school record with a time of 1:52, and a new school and conference record in the men’s 100-yard breaststroke.

“The kids swam awesome. I have no complaints. We had huge time drops,” said Pike.

“Every single one of our kids scored a point at conference. Every one of them made it back in at least one event at night.”

In its fourth year since reinstatement by Jan Stuebbe and Charlie Pike, the BC team consists of local Kern County swimmers.

Pike has refrained from the type of recruiting seen at some of the larger schools, and concentrates on finding local talent.

“To me this whole thing has been more about coaching than recruiting, and that’s the way I’m trying to view it. If I wanted to be a recruiter I’d go look for a Division 1 job somewhere,” said Pike.

“The kids in the community are starting to figure out what we got going on up here,” continued Pike.

“I am really trying to build on just the local high school kids and not going out of the area to recruit.”