Vance 8th in 1650 at first-ever El Corzaon meet

Joe Naiman

Village News Reporter

The first-ever swim meet to be held at El Corzaon Aquatic Center in Oceanside included an eighth-place finish in the 1,650-yard freestyle race by Fallbrook Associated Swim Team member Carson Vance.

Vance, who is 15 and a Fallbrook High School sophomore, swam four events including the 1,650-yard competition. He was the only FAST swimmer to compete at the Dec. 18-20 Winter Age Group Championship meet.

El Corazon Aquatic Center is in El Corazon Park in eastern Oceanside. “I think it’s amazing. It’s a great facility. They did a very good job building it,” said FAST director of coaching Sean Redmond. “It’s going to be fun seeing more meets there.”

Vance competed in the boys 15-18 division. His time of 18:02.73 in the 1,650-yard freestyle placed him eighth among the 24 swimmers in that event and was a personal record for that distance by approximately 56 seconds.

“That was a very good swim for him,” Redmond said. “He was able to pretty much keep up his pace throughout the whole swim.”

Vance did not advance past the preliminaries, in which the swimmers with the top 16 times in each event advance to the finals, in his other three races. He had the 22nd-place time of 10:53.36 in the 1,000-yard freestyle. Vance completed the 200-yard freestyle in 1:56.38, which gave him 47th place among approximately 80 swimmers in the division. The 100-yard butterfly also had approximately 80 swimmers in the boys 15-18 division, and Vance placed 63rd with a time of 1:00.23.

The meet included swimmers from Wyoming, Utah, and Arizona as well as throughout California. As a 15-year-old swimming against 18-year-olds as well as 17-year-olds and 16-year-olds, Vance was at a disadvantage in terms of placing at the meet although Redmond notes that being among the youngest of the division’s competitors augments the significance of Vance’s eighth-place finish and that his lower finishes in the other events weren’t disappointing.

“I think it’s going to help him,” Redmond said. “It gives him an idea of some of the competition he’s going to go against when we get into the high school season.”

Vance was home-schooled during the 2020-21 school year and did not compete for Fallbrook High School as a freshman, so the spring 2022 swim season will constitute his high school swim debut. Redmond noted that Vance will have additional meets prior to the start of high school swim competition. “Any of that is going to go a long way for him to get ready for the season,” Redmond said.