Warriors 10th among D-I boys at CIF swim meet

Fallbrook High School’s boys swim team placed 10th among Division I schools at the CIF swim meet.

“To go 10th place was really an accomplishment,” Fallbrook coach Bill Richardson said. “It was one of the fastest CIFs I have ever seen, so that was really great.”

Richardson has been Fallbrook’s boys swim coach since 1996.

“I was hoping to go top 10,” he said.

Last year the Warriors finished fourth among Division I boys, but six of the Fallbrook participants were 2018 seniors and the Warriors’ position points were also obtained by current junior Cameron Batty, whose shoulder injury kept him from competing this year.

“I thought we had lost too much,” Richardson said.

The freshmen on this year’s varsity team included three who qualified for the CIF finals in two individual events.

“They really did well,” Richardson said. “We had more freshmen in multiple events than any other school.”

The swim preliminaries were held May 2 at Del Norte High School. The swimmers or relay teams with the eight fastest times advanced to the championship final May 4, at Del Norte, while the next eight fastest marks earned lanes in the May 4 consolation final at Del Norte. Team position points were given for the finishes in the championship and consolation races. The CIF meet also included diving May 3, at Mesa College with team points given for the divers with the 16 highest scores.

The only Fallbrook individual to qualify for the championship final, freshman Doug Pearce, had a 200-yard individual medley preliminaries time of 1 minute 58.37 seconds. That time was seventh in the preliminaries, and in the championship race Pearce took sixth place after completing his laps in 1:57.11.

“He had a great swim,” Richardson said.

Pearce is Doug Pearce VI. The current school record of 1:51.44 was set in 2006 by Danny McClary, but when Richardson became the Warriors’ coach Doug Pearce V held the school record.

“As a freshman he was three seconds faster than his dad,” Richardson said of Doug Pearce VI.

Doug Pearce V graduated from Fallbrook High School in 1995.

One of Fallbrook’s other freshman, Kai Maestas, was in the consolation final for the 200-yard individual medley. During the preliminaries he swam that event in 2:02.78 for 15th place, and he completed the consolation final in 2:04.61 and obtained 14th place.

Pearce was 16th in the 100-yard butterfly preliminaries with a time of 54.42 seconds. He improved his time to 54.11 seconds in the final although he still finished 16th.

The Warriors also had a sixth-place finish in a relay race: senior Caleb Smedley, senior Tiane Maestas, Pearce and junior Joe Moran swam the 200-yard medley relay in 1:41.08. They had placed eighth in the preliminaries with a time of 1:42.39.

Fallbrook’s 200-yard freestyle relay team of junior Derek Enns, Moran, Tiane Maestas and freshman Brock Bushnell also competed in the championship race. An eighth-place preliminaries time of 1:30.72 qualified them for the championship final, and their time of 1:30.23 gave them seventh place.

The other relay race is the 400-yard freestyle relay. Bushnell, Pearce, Kai Maestas and Enns were 10th both in the preliminaries and in the final. Their times were 3:19.90 in their preliminary heat and 3:20.62 in the consolation final.

Donovan Taylor is a sophomore although this is his first year diving. Seven judges assess each dive for the CIF meet. The two highest scores and the two lowest scores are discarded, and the three middle scores are added together and multiplied by the dive’s degree of difficulty to determine the score for each dive. Each of the divers performed six dives during the meet. Taylor accumulated 203.15 points, which gave him 10th place.

Three other Fallbrook divers competed at the CIF meet but did not place in the top 16: sophomore Hayden Orchard scored 166.15 points for 22nd place, junior Isai Soto had the 26th-place score of 156.90 points and senior Carlos Mejia took 29th place with 141.95 points.

Kai Maestas had a time of 1:01.85 in the 100-yard breaststroke for 12th place. He had the ninth-place preliminaries time of 1:01.15. Tiane Maestas swam that event in 1:02.99 in the preliminaries, giving him 17th place and first alternate status. A time of 1:08.35 gave junior Owen Hearn 30th place in the preliminaries.

Bushnell had 50-yard freestyle times of 22.46 seconds both in the preliminaries and in the consolation final. His preliminaries swim placed him 16th, but he improved to 14th in the final.

Enns posted a time of 22.66 seconds in the preliminaries for 18th place. Moran took 27th place with a time of 23.18 seconds.

Bushnell was 16th in both the preliminaries and the consolation final for the 100-yard freestyle event. He swam the preliminaries in 49.81 seconds and the final in 50.25 seconds. Enns was the first alternate after his preliminaries time of 49.84 seconds placed him 17th. Moran swam the preliminaries in 50.60 seconds for 27th place.

Smedley was 16th in the 100-yard backstroke with a time of 58.58 seconds. His preliminaries time of 57.50 seconds placed him 15th.