By J. Ryan Erickson
Staff Writer
Playing a rival school is difficult, especially for the team that’s away. When the Costa boys and girls swim teams traveled to Redondo Union High School to take on the Seahawks on April 21, the deck was stacked against their success.
The Costa boys came out on the wrong side of a 94-75 meet, while the Mustang girls brought home a comfortable victory of 135-31. The team looked to end its Bay League season strongly yesterday at home against West Torrance High School, but scores were unavailable at the time of publication.
“I’ve never seen the varsity girls look better,” coach Dan Bartlett said. “The boys still have Bay League to make up for it.”
Despite losing, the boys had some high points. Costa’s 200 medley team’s 1:49.73 narrowly beat Redondo, with seniors Tristan Koester and Kevin Portis along with sophomore Michael Brown getting personal-best individual times of 29.17, 25.68 and 30.86, respectively, in the event.
“Our boys and girls teams are loaded with talent,” Bartlett said. “Our girls seem like the best team we’ve had at Costa in years, and the boys are one of the best squads in the Bay League.”
Accompanying many other outstanding performances, the Mustang girls 200 freestyle team took home the first, second and third-place finishes for the event. Costa senior Marisa Purcell broke her personal record with a time of 2:05.08 for the event but was unable to beat sophomore Meriel Mitsakos’s 1:59.85 first-place time.
“The pool had some bad conditions, but we overcame them and swam well against a tough team,” Purcell said.
Bartlett and other team members also took issue with some conditions at the meet, such as cold water temperature, shallow pool depth and loud crowds at the meet. Bartlett foresees more success for Costa in its CIF rematch against the Seahawks, where these issues will be less extreme.
“We’re going to go out in our next match with a lot of energy,” Bartlett said. “As a whole, we’re all getting faster and more experienced with every match we have.”
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