Boys swim opens with tri-meet
By Joe Naiman
A double dual meet, or a tri-meet, opened Ramona High School’s boys swim season March 9 at Grossmont High School.
The Bulldogs faced Scripps Ranch as well as Grossmont. Ramona did not field a full team but won three of the 11 races while posting three automatic qualifying times for the CIF meet and four additional CIF meet consideration times.
“I was happy. I was more than impressed,” said Coach Frank Yturralde.
The Bulldogs began the season with nine varsity swimmers and nine junior varsity swimmers. Since each swimmer is limited to two individual races and two relay races for one meet, at least 12 swimmers are needed for teams to have full scoring opportunities. Qualifying for the CIF meet is based on individual or relay quartet race times rather than team season records, so the losses are irrelevant to Ramona’s future season activities. Yturralde’s emphasis for the season-opening meet was on times, starts, and turns.
“I was more focused on that than actually winning the meet,” he said.
The team has five swimmers who were on the 2011 varsity.
“I lost a lot of seniors last year,” Yturralde said. “We’re very young.”
This year’s team has three seniors: Nathan Creswell, Ted Dean, and Zach Lane. All three were on last year’s varsity squad, as were current sophomores Garrett Glaudini and Carlo Silva. Juniors Isaac Gross and Ian Jacoway and sophomore Jesse Reiling were junior varsity swimmers in 2011 while junior Nick Munoz swam junior varsity races in 2010 but did not swim for the Bulldogs last year. Yturralde noted that he will likely promote some junior varsity swimmers if he deems them worthy of varsity competition.
Glaudini won both of his individual races. His time of 4:46.85 in the 500-yard freestyle is an automatic qualifying time for the CIF meet while his performance of 50.36 seconds in the 100-yard freestyle is a consideration time.
Ramona’s other winner was Silva, who posted an automatic time of 1:04.45 in the 100-yard breaststroke.
The Bulldogs also posted an automatic qualifying time in the 200-yard medley relay. Ramona’s 1:49.35 result involved Glaudini opening with the backstroke, Silva swimming the breaststroke, Munoz covering 50 yards by butterfly stroke, and Dean closing out the race with the freestyle. Ramona had consideration times in the other two relay races. Gross, Creswell, Reiling, and Lane swam the 200-yard freestyle relay in 1:41.88 while Dean, Lane, Silva, and Glaudini took 3:38.84 in the 400-yard freestyle relay.
Dean’s time of 23.95 in the 50-yard freestyle gave him a consideration time for that event.
“Overall I was very pleased with the performance,” Yturralde said.
The Bulldogs will travel to Mt. Carmel High School for Saturday’s Sundevil Invitational meet and will have their first home meet of the season Tuesday against El Camino.