It seems fitting that as the weather heats up, the Diablo Valley College swimming and diving team just wrapped up an impressive 2011 season. At the California Community College Athletic Association Swimming and Diving State Championships late last month, the Vikings women’s team finished second out of a field of 36, while the men placed fourth among 33 teams.
Head coach Rick Millington attributes at least part of DVC’s success to a constantly evolving team dynamic. Complimenting a core of talented returning swimmers, the DVC squad featured a number of athletes who vastly improved over the course of the season. One of those emerging swimmers was freshman Lisa Boozer.
“Lisa really came out and surprised us this year,” said Millington, the state and conference coach of the year. “She’s lowered her times considerably since the start of the season. She just missed breaking the national record in the 50-yard breaststroke by three tenths of a second.”
Boozer’s progression culminated at the state finals, winning both the 50 and 100-yard breaststroke events with times of 0:30.59 and 1:05.97, respectively. The freshman was also part of the women’s 200-yard medley relay team that finished with the fastest time, but were later disqualified on a controversial ruling by the race officials. The Vikings’ 400-yard medley relay squad on the men’s side also suffered the same fate, again finishing with the event’s fastest time.
“Those two disqualifications were frustrating,” explained Millington. “We had the races on tape and when we went back to look at them clearly (the officials) made the wrong calls. But that just goes to show you that the kids overcame some road bumps and still performed extremely well.”
Despite the relay team setbacks, there were a number of other individual victories for the Vikings. Talented sophomore Galen Sollom-Brotherton won the 400-yard individual medley (4:00.21) and dominated the 1650-yard freestyle (15:39.73) event, winning the long distance race by over thirty seconds. While Sollom-Bortherton’s performance anchored the men’s team, freshman Pierce Hunter was part of the second place 800-yard freestyle relay team, and fellow freshman Nick Garrett was on the disqualified medley relay squad.
On the women’s side, freshman Diandra Prutton won a pair of backstroke events, the 50-yard (0:26.98) and 100-yard (0:57.69). Fellow freshman Rebekah Padilla won the 50-yard butterfly (0:26.07), finishing the year without losing in that event. Padilla was also part of the victorious 400-yard medley relay team along with sophomore Katie Sartini and freshmen Aly Pickersgill and Boozer.
“I thought we outswam most of the teams,” said Millington. “The problem for us was that we just couldn’t compete with the sheer number of some of the other teams. That’s how a lot of them beat us out in terms of total points.”
The Vikings had nine swimmers qualify on both the men’s and women’s teams for the state championships, a number that was dwarfed by some of the larger southern California teams. The lack of a deep diving team this year due to injury also limited the number of total points Diablo could accumulate.
However, building off this year’s success, Millington thinks the women’s team will be right back in the running for a state title next year. The men’s squad will take a little more work with only three of the nine finals qualifying swimmers returning.
“The women’s side should be very good next year,” said Millington. “There’s a lot of talented freshman returning and we have some high school athletes”…if they commit”…could really help us out. We should be pretty tough to beat again next season.”
