Bushnell shares win at CIF meet

Joe Naiman

Village News Reporter

Fallbrook High School senior Brock Bushnell shared first place in the CIF Division I swim finals May 7 at Granite Hills High School, both Fallbrook freestyle relay teams set school records, and the Warriors had the seventh-place Division I boys team score.

The swimmers or relay teams with the top 16 times in each event during the May 4 preliminaries at Granite Hills advanced to the May 7 finals with the eight fastest times earning lanes in the championship final and the next eight best marks advancing to the consolation finals. Position points were given for the championship finals and consolation finals positions. All CIF meet diving took place May 6 at Granite Hills with position points being given for the top 16 scores in each of the two CIF divisions.

As a team, Fallbrook accumulated 133 1/2 points for seventh among Division I schools. Eastlake was sixth with 138 points while Scripps Ranch had the eighth-place score of 108 points.

“I thought we did real well,” said Fallbrook coach Bill Richardson. “We took a handful of guys and got some kids in finals.”

The only Fallbrook boy in the CIF diving competition, freshman Felix Alcorn, had a score of 156.80 points on six dives to take 12th. The first swimming event was the 200-yard medley relay, and the Fallbrook quartet of senior Kai Maestas, senior Tegan Cannon, senior Matthew Herbert, and sophomore Sam Goode had a preliminaries time of 1:45.00 for 15th place and then the 15th-place finals time of 1:45.92.

Fallbrook’s only swimmer in the 200-yard freestyle preliminaries, sophomore Carson Vance, had the 26th-place time of 1:52.73 and did not advance to the finals.

Bushnell had a time of 21.74 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle preliminaries which placed third behind the 20.97-second performance of Canyon Crest senior Xavier Chauvapun and the 21.38-second time of Del Norte sophomore Jacob Chu. In the championship finals, Bushnell and Chu had identical times of 21.14 seconds while Chauvapun was third at 21.34 seconds.

“It was a bang-bang finish from first to third,” Richardson said. That gave Bushnell a share of first place. “We didn’t know it at the time,” Richardson said.

The posted times on the scoreboard aren’t the official times but are the times seen at the meet. “You go by what it says on the wall,” Richardson said.

Bushnell and everybody else thought he finished second. “That’s what they announced,” Richardson said.

The actual times take precedence over what is shown and announced. “There are some variables you have to check, and when they went and checked those they saw there was a tie,” Richardson said.

The official times are posted after the meet. “That’s when we learned that his actual time was about a tenth (of a second) faster than the one posted on the scoreboard,” Richardson said.

In 2008, Bushnell’s brother, Stott, swam the CIF championship race in 21.14 seconds, which set a school record. Bobby Guerra broke that record in 2015 with a time of 20.98 seconds, so Brock Bushnell tied the family record but not the current school record.

The 50-yard freestyle preliminaries also included a 16th-place time of 22.50 seconds by senior Doug Pearce. Pearce improved his time to 22.44 seconds in the consolation finals for 14th place.

Pearce was also in the 100-yard butterfly consolation finals. His preliminaries time of 52.61 seconds placed him ninth, and he took second in the consolation race and 10th overall with a time of 52.41 seconds.

Bushnell also reached the championship final in the 100-yard freestyle. In the preliminaries, his time of 46.94 seconds placed him third behind Chauvapun and Torrey Pines senior Ethan Purcell. Bushnell swam the finals in 46.54 seconds, once again taking third behind the two swimmers with faster preliminaries times. A time of 48.92 seconds placed junior Ian Ritchie ninth in the preliminaries, and his time of 48.94 in the consolation finals gave Fallbrook 10th-place points.

The Chauvapun family at Canyon Crest also includes freshman Drake Chauvapun, whose time of 4:56.00 in the 500-yard freestyle preliminaries gave him the 16th and last position in the finals. Vance finished in 4:58.54 for 19th place.

Bushnell, Ritchie, Maestas, and Pearce swam the 200-yard freestyle relay in 1:29.32 during the preliminaries, giving them the fifth-fastest time and a lane in the championship final. Torrey Pines set a CIF section record by winning the final in 1:24.95. Canyon Crest was second with a time of 1:26.60. Bushnell, Ritchie, Maestas, and Pearce finished in 1:27.03 which gave them not only third place but also a school record.

“We broke the existing school record by exactly half a second, which is a pretty substantial drop in this relay,” Richardson said.

In the 2012, CIF finals Garrett McKeown, Sam McDaniels, Bobby Guerra, and Mike Maryn set a school record of 1:27.53.

Ritchie had a time of 1:00.72 in the 100-yard backstroke preliminaries to finish 24th. The next event was the 100-yard breaststroke; Herbert was in the preliminaries but had a 25th-place time of 1:07.19 while Maestas was 10th in the preliminaries at 1:00.48 and won the consolation final in 59.56 seconds for ninth-place points. The eight championship finals swimmers automatically place first through eighth regardless of whether a consolation finals time is faster; Maestas had the sixth-fastest time in the finals.

The 400-meter freestyle relay is the final race of a high school meet. Pearce, Ritchie, Maestas, and Bushnell swam the preliminaries in 3:14.63 for fourth, 0.40 seconds behind the third-place time of Canyon Crest and 0.59 seconds slower than Carlsbad’s second-place time. Torrey Pines won the final in 3:05.34, which is a new CIF section record. Carlsbad finished second at 3:11.86. Pearce, Ritchie, Maestas, and Bushnell took third place with a 3:12.23 performance.

“They had a great swim, were very motivated trying to set the school record,” Richardson said.

They achieved the school record which was previously 3:12.40. “It was the oldest record we still had in the book,” Richardson said.

The record dated back to 2001 when David Brown, Chris Zedenoff, Alec Harris, and Danny Ender comprised that 400-yard freestyle relay team.

“Both of those freestyle records I thought would be broken this year or had a chance to be broken this year. We had the four swimmers for that,” Richardson said.