Swimming: Exciting prelims (including a record) just a prelim to SEC finals on Saturday

The local teams hit the water on Friday (Feb. 25) for the SEC prelims and the meet featured some amazing performances – and it was just the prelims! The finals will take place on Saturday (Feb. 26) beginning at noon at Skyline. Here is a little breakdown of the races …

In the medley relay, Pioneer and Skyline were separated by 1 second. Jack Wilkening, Robert Yang, and Lucas Caswell all split 22s in their backstroke or fly leg – that’s a good time for a 50 free!

200 Free – Ryan Hume was crazy-fast. His 1:38.64 was just a tad slower than Matthew Segal’s state championship winning time of 1:38.24 last year.

200 IM – Ben Kurniawan from Skyline is the heavy favorite.  The race will be for second.

50 free – This will be a splash-fest with the first five kids within a second of each other. Skyline’s Matthew Lee could end up touching first.

100 fly – Robert Yang (Pioneer) 50.08 vs. Ben Kurniawan (Skyline) 50.09 in today’s prelim –  only separated by one one-hundredth of a second! Tomorrow will be exciting.

100 free – The race is between two Skyline swimmers – Mathew Lee and Evan McKelvey

500 free – Ryan Hume from Pioneer should win and teammate Teo Jaworski should touch second. The race for third should be a close swim.

200 free relay – Every swimmer on Skyline and Pioneer’s A relay split under 22. However, Skyline had an incredible anchor leg by Matthew Lee with a 19.92. The Skyline relay (Evan McKelvey, Jack Staunton, Ben Kurniawan, and Matthew Lee) broke the SEC RECORD. Because prelims are circle-seeded, the top swimmers don’t race each other until the finals. Just imagine how fast both teams will go when they’re racing head to head!

100 back – Jack Wilkening (Pioneer) broke his Pioneer varsity record.

100 breast – There’s no one that should win. It’s just a matter of who has the best race Saturday. First four kids are separated by less than a second and the next four are only another second behind. It should be a close race across the pool in the finals.

400 free relay – Skyline finished first and Pioneer second in prelims. Just like the 200 free relay, they’ll go head to head in Saturday’s finals.