800 FREE RELAY HIGHLIGHTS DAY TWO

At the second day of the California Community College State Swim Championships, Golden West College grabbed the silver medal in the 800 yard freestyle relay as they dropped eight seconds from their entry time. The foursome of Nolan Chomin, Tommy Kelly, Zach Bishop and Kyle Sary recorded a time of 6:50.40 to finish behind Sierra College (6:45.18) but ahead of Orange Coast and Riverside, two teams that had narrowly beaten the Rustlers at the Orange-Empire Conference championships two weeks ago.

Head Coach Tracy Maurer felt the team followed the game plan perfectly. "We got creative with our lineup and it paid off. Nolan is our distance ace and he even split his leg (1:42.82), Tommy moved the team up to second (1:41.86), sprinter Zach finished strong (1:43.74) and Kyle was our X-factor (1:41.98) who refused to back down after being challenged by OCC down the stretch. We are very pleased as each person had a lifetime best. Perfect time to do it."

Kelly earlier in the finals session finished fourth in the 400 yard individual medley, recording a time of 4:04.49 in a race where the first two finishers went under 4:00. Kelly was actually leading after the backstroke portion of the race, swam well the last two segments to improve by almost three seconds.

Sary and Chomin picked up points in the 200 freestyle and Bishop scored in the 100 backstroke to add to the team's total. After two full days of competition, GWC sits in seventh place with 148.5 points behind Cuesta 176, El Camino 176 and Riverside 173 in positions 4-6. Sierra leads the meet with 439.5 followed by Orange Coast 369 and Mt. Sac 209