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Daily Newspaper and Travel Guide
for Pecos Country of West Texas
Thursday, January 30, 20023
Swimmers seek to repeat as region champs
District champions together for the third year in a row, the Pecos
Eagles swim team will now try and repeat that effort at the Region I-4A
Swimming and Diving Championships, which began at noon today at the
Pete Ragus Aquatic Center in Lubbock.
Diving finals were set for this afternoon, while the Class
4A swimming preliminaries will begin at 4 p.m. on Friday and the finals at
4 p.m. on Saturday. However, all of the Pecos swimmers and divers left
for Lubbock at 6 a.m. this morning.
This is the fourth year for Class 4A regional and state
competition, and the girls have won the last two regional titles, while the boys
have swept all three regional meets. Both will be favored again to take
the regional titles, after the girls won the District 3-4A championship by
85 points over Andrews and the boys defeated the second-place
Mustangs by 57 points.
However, coach Terri Morse said she expected her swimmers to
have to improve on their results of this past Saturday in order to
assure themselves of spots at next month's Class 4A State Championships
in Austin.
"In the past this regional meet has gotten faster than previous
regional meets, and this year I don't think that's going to be any different,"
she said.
All swimmers who advanced to the district finals last weekend
earns spots at this weekend's regional meet. But in Lubbock, only the winners
of each event will move on to state automatically, while the others
would have to qualify for one of the eight available at-large berths, based
on times.
"I think some of our better swimmers are seeded pretty
well," compared with the other state regional times, Morse said. "One
or two have faster times right now, but I'm sure more will have faster
times after regionals. But I expect us to cut our times, so looking at what
other people did at district and what we did, we're not that far off."
The Eagles were hoping that junior Michael Juarez would be
feeling better for today's 1-meter diving competition. Juarez missed
practice on Wednesday with what Morse said was a cold, but added, "It's not a
big thing."
Juarez won the regional diving event last year and took the
district title last week. Freshmen Andrew Grant and Miguel Estrada
also qualified for today's competition.
In the swimming events, the seedings on the boys' side will
be pretty much the same as the finishes at district this past Saturday.
The Eagles are seeded first in the 200 medley and 400 freestyle relays,
and individually Will Oglesby will be seeded first in the 100 yard
butterfly and 500 freestyle; Max Key will be seeded first in the 100 freestyle
and 100 yard breaststroke; K.W. Winkles will be seeded first in the
200 individual medley and Daniel Quintana is ranked No. 1 going
into the 200 yard freestyle.
Winkles and Quintana pulled off upset victories over Big
Spring's Michael Carrasco and Josh Pike, while Key narrowly beat
out Monahans' Ethan Lewallen for the 100 yard freestyle title at district.
On the girls' side, the Eagles will face some other challenges
coming out of District 1-4A and 2-4A from the El Paso area. The main one will
be from sophomore Laura Jackson, who finished third in Class 5A last year
as a freshman in the 50-yard freestyle. She transferred from El
Paso Coronado to the new El Paso Chapin High School this year and will
be seeded first in that event, ahead of Pecos' Susan Moore, who
won district with a 26.12 time. Jackson comes in with a 25.45 time and
will also be seeded first in the 100 freestyle, where Moore
placed second at district to Big Spring's Nancy Wallace.
The other main challenges for Pecos will come in the
200-yard freestyle relay and the 100 yard breaststroke. The Eagles are
seeded first in the 200 relay, while El Paso High will go into regionals
seeded second, while in the breaststroke, freshman Lindsey Shaw remains
the No. 1 seed, but El Paso Ysleta's Jessica Rivas will be seeded
second entering Friday's preliminaries.
Shaw will also be seeded first in the 200 individual medley, as will
the girls 200 medley and 400 yard freestyle relays. Pecos' other No.
1 seeds going into regionals are Teddie Salcido in the 200 and 500
yard freestyle races, and Catherine Minjarez in the 100-yard butterfly.
Pecos Enterprise
York M. "Smokey" Briggs, Publisher
Division of Buckner News Alliance, Inc.
324 S. Cedar St., Pecos, TX 79772
Phone 915-445-5475, FAX 915-445-4321
e-mail news@pecos.net
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Copyright 2003 by Pecos Enterprise
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