Swimming

Freshman Bianca Nwaizu Wins 100 Breast in 1:01.03 at CIF-SS Division 4 Championship Meet

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By Braden Keith on SwimSwam

2024 CIF Southern Section Swimming – Division IV Championships

  • April 25-May 2, 2024
  • Mt. San Antonio College Aquatic Center, Walnut, California
  • Short Course Yards (25 yards), Prelims/Finals (9 per heat)
  • Full Meet Results
  • Final Team Scores

The 2024 CIF Southern Section Division 4 Swimming & Diving Championship finals on Friday saw a pair of teams that weren’t in contention last season rise to championships this season.

  • The Southern Section of the CIF has four divisions, with Division 1 generally being the biggest and fastest schools and Division 4 generally being the smallest schools.

On the girls’ side, Mayfair High School rose from a 15th place finish last season to win this year’s title with 180 points, placing them 21 clear of the runners-up from La Palma’s Kennedy High School.

On the boys’ side, Thousand Oaks High School won the title by a strong margin, placing 38 points ahead of Laguna Blanca 206-168. Last year, Thousand Oaks swam in Division 2, where they had only one qualifier at the CIF-SS meet and scored no points. Laguna Blanca was a renaissance story themselves – they finished 38th at this meet last year with only 27 points.

Girls’ Meet Recap

Top 5 Team Scores:

  1. Mayfair – 180
  2. Kennedy (La Palma) – 159
  3. CAMS – 119
  4. Buena Park – 109
  5. Laguna Hills – 106

While Kennedy High School took the lion’s share of the wins in the relays, a clinching and convincing 400 free relay victory to end the meet for a young Mayfair team was enough to secure the win for them.

The relay of sophomore Jamisen Grimes (1:00.85), senior Emma Douglass (56.52), freshman Katie Cummings (58.36), and sophomore Ellie Bartschi (58.90) combined to win in 3:54.63, almost nine-seconds ahead of the runners-up from Buena Park (4:03.41).

By nature of these smaller programs, both Kennedy and Mayfair went scoreless in a relay each. In the opening 200 medley relay, the Kennedy relay of Briel Dronkers (33.55), Aira Takeuchi (30.39), Natalie Umpornpuckdi (27.73), and Kiera Kabar (27.40) combined for a 1:59.07.

They overcame a 30.07 leadoff from Mayfair freshman Cummings and a 29.25 leadoff from Glen Wilson freshman Irene Kim to grab the win. Mayfair ultimately placed 2nd in 2:00.42 in the only real relay head-to-head between the Section’s top two squads, while WCH ultimately finished 3rd in 2:00.63.

In the 200 free relay, Kennedy again won in 1:47.99 with the same quartet of Takeuchi (26.29), Kabar (27.52), Dronkers (29.10), and Umpornpuckdi (25.08). Mayfair didn’t enter a relay in that event. Likewise in the closing 400 free relay that Mayfair won, Kennedy entered a relay, but they placed 32nd in prelims and out of the scoring finals.

Mayfair then grabbed the rest of their individual points without taking a single individual event win, instead relying on a team effort from their top three performers to rack up points. Cummings scored 33 points with best times from both a 7th-place finish in the 100 free (47.28) and a runner-up finish in the 100 back (1:05.10); Ellie Bartschi scored 33 points thanks to best times in both the 200 free (2:04.17 – 5th) and 500 free (5:37.82/5:36.74 in prelims – 4th); and Douglass scored 32 points thanks to a best time in the 200 IM (2:20.71 – 5th) and a 5th place finish in the 100 free (56.68).

That left plenty of individual accolades to go around for swimmers whose schools didn’t have the depth to pick up big rewards in the double-points relays. That included three swimmers who were double winners individually:

  • Freshman Irene Kim from Glen Wilson High School won the 500 free in 5:05.05 and the 200 IM in a personal best of 2:08.89. Her best 200 IM coming into the meet was a 2:10.70, and her best 200 IM coming into the calendar year was a 2:21.
  • Blair High junior Ella Lesnever won the 50 free in 23.17 and the 100 free in 50.25. Both were new lifetime bests – her 50 free swim cut .22 seconds off her previous best from March and her 100 free swim cut .56 seconds off her previous best from December. The 100 free is a new Winter Junior Nationals cut and a new D4 Meet Record – breaking the 51.01 done in 2009 by Mary Hanson. She has not yet announced a college commitment.
  • Santa Clarita Christian junior Sophia Blietz won the 100 back (56.85) and the 100 fly (57.24), both in personal bests. She knocked over a second off her best time in the 100 fly set at this meet last year.

Of that trio, only Irene Kim swam relays. Besides the aforementioned backstroke leadoff leg (she didn’t swim the 100 back individually), she also split 54.96 on Glen Wilson’s 400 free relay anchor leg, though that relay was eventually DQ’ed after touching in 2nd place – knocking the team from a likely top three finish all the way to 10th place in the team battle.

The most-significant individual result was from Liberty Christian freshman Bianca Nwaizu who won the 100 breaststroke in 1:01.03. That knocks three-tenths of a second off her best time from Winter Juniors – West in December and makes her the 2nd-fastest American this season in the 13-14 age group.

It also climbs her to 8th all-time in the 13-14 age group.

All-Time Rankings, US 13-14 100 SCY Breaststroke

  1. Alexis Wenger – 1:00.02 (2015)
  2. Bella Brito – 1:00.06 (2022)
  3. Raya Mellott – 1:00.60 (2022)
  4. Karina Plaza – 1:00.67 (2024)
  5. Chloe Yip – 1:00.81 (2022)
  6. Allie Raab – 1:00.84 (2016)
  7. Zoe Skirboll – 1:00.96 (2019)
  8. Bianca Nwaizu – 1:01.03 (2024)
  9. Tori DeSilvia – 1:01.09 (1989)
  10. Nikol Popov – 1:01.17 (2014)

Her times in both prelims and finals broke the CIF-Southern Section Records of 1:04.54 set in 2011 by Lilly Parks.

Nwaizu also was the 2nd qualifier in the 50 free in 23.65, but was DQ’ed in finals for a false start.

Other Individual Champions

  • Bella Chavez from Ambassador Christian High School won the 200 free in 1:55.55, shattering her own previous personal best of 1:58.32 from December.
  • James Jones from the Crossroads School was the best D4 finisher in the 1-meter diving event last week, scoring 497.05 points.

Boys’ Meet Recap

The recently-reclassified boys from Thousand Oaks High School roared its way to a program-first CIF-Southern Section championship on Thursday.

Top 5 Team Scores:

  1. Thousand Oaks – 206
  2. Laguna Blanca – 168
  3. Da Vinci – 149
  4. Geffen Academy – 134
  5. Webb – 117

With only two swimmers scoring over 20 points individually, Thousand Oaks was powered by its relays, which were responsible for 118 out of their 206 points at the meet.

That included wins in both the 200 medley relay (1:43.45) and 400 free relay (3:19.93) to bookend the meet.

In the opening event, the relay of Sean Henry (26.38), Keith Warner (29.62), Curren Mealiffe (25.68), and Connor Overton (21.77) won by a second-and-a-half over the runners-up from the Da Vinci Schools.

Overton the anchor is the lone member of this Thousand Oaks team that raced at last year’s D2 Championship meet. The rest of that relay has made leaps-and-bounds this season, or are newcomers altogether. As an example, Mealiffe swam 1:00.50 at his League Championship in the 100 fly, and he dropped that all the way to a 56.82 at this year’s CIF meet in prelims. Sean Henry, a junior, didn’t race for Thousand Oaks last season, nor did Warner, a senior.

That 2nd-place Da Vinci Schools relay, which touched 2nd in 1:44.95, included two sophomores and two freshmen, which should leave them to contend for titles for years to come, including notably a 21.82 anchor from newcomer Rayan Engineer.

Overton (48.29) led off the winning 400 free relay for Thousand Oaks that was over nine seconds clear of the field at the end of the session. He was joined by freshman Luca Bazerkanian (52.26), Henry (49.58), and Mealiffe (49.80) in that winning effort.

Overton was the team’s top individual point scorer, grabbing 33 via a 3rd place finish in the 100 back (54.93) and 6th place finish in the 50 free (21.97). That 50 free time took more than half-a-second off his previous best of 22.52 from April’s Coastal Canyon League Championship meet.

Laguna Bianca, runners-up in the team battle, won the day’s other relay, the 200 free relay, in 1:32.04. A young group of four underclassmen was led by freshman Yikai Feng (22.43), joined by sophomore Jack Grube (24.99), sophomore Sullivan Bennett (22.77), and junior Rio Valle (21.85).

Monrovia finished 2nd in 1:34.00.

While Thousand Oaks and Laguna Blanca rode relays to the top two spots in the team battle, neither school had any individual event winners. In fact, all nine individual event winners came from teams that finished the meet ranked 15th-and-lower.

Among those was Alex Davies of the Chadwick School, who scored 44 of his team’s 58 points in leading them to a 15th-place finish. He won the 100 free (46.13) and the 200 free (1:41.92) with a best time of 1:40.69 in prelims of the latter race. A senior committed to stay locally at Division III CMS College, his previous best in the 100 free was a 46.49 from early March.

Orangewood Academy junior Haru Yamagata also won both of his individual events, setting personal bests in both races too. He won the 50 free in 21.12, improving on his old best of 21.94 from December; and the 100 breast in 53.97, improving on his old best of 54.53 also from December.

That shattered the old Meet Record of 54.89 set in 2016 by Edgar Chin.

Yamagata has massively0improved his recruiting stock as a junior. At last year’s CIF D4 meet, for example, he was an exhibition swimmer and swam 57.26 in the 100 breast.

Elijah Redson from Marantha High School joined the party with a win in the 100 back (52.48) and 200 IM (1:56.51), again both best times. He also swam a best time of 22.45 in the 50 free leading off Marantha’s 200 free relay. Marantha swam in Division III last year, where Redson finished 5th in the 100 back in 54.20.

Other Individual Champions

  • Gahr High School junior Carlos Valderrama won the 100 fly in 49.42, taking a win in a nail-biter over Pacific’s Connor McAleer. McAleer won last year’s title in 51.61, showing big progress for him as well.
  • Anaheim Discovery Christian junior Bo Zheng won the 500 free in 4:43.90.
  • Capistrano Valley Christian junior Grant Schneider won 1-meter diving with a score of 595. While there were only four boys divers in D4, Schneider had the second-best score across the four CIF-SS meets.

SwimSwam: Freshman Bianca Nwaizu Wins 100 Breast in 1:01.03 at CIF-SS Division 4 Championship Meet

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