Plenty of heroics for OCC men as they take third overall at State Meet

LOS ANGELES -- After two days of being off of the awards podium, the Orange Coast College men's swim team battled hard on Saturday and earned a third-place team score of 382 to cap off the three-day California Community College Athletic Association State Swimming and Diving Championships, held at East Los Angeles College.

Sierra College won the school's first-ever men's swim team title with 543.5 points, but the Pirates managed to hold off Riverside City College (378) with just enough in the final event of the meet.

The turning point of the afternoon for the Pirates came in the 200-yard butterfly, where Diego Pabalan battled tooth and nail against Golden West's Nathan Torres and College of the Canyons' Griffin Scott.

At the halfway point of the race, Pabalan touched the wall in third place before the freshman standout found another gear and roared past Torres and Scott and carred a .2 of a second lead into the final 50 yards. His 50-yard split of 28.38 at the 100-150 mark was over a second faster than the rest of the field.

From there, Pabalan just got stronger and faster as he claimed the state title with a time of 1 minute, 50.87 seconds. Torres (1:52.59) finished second, while Sierra College's Jason Williams (1:53.78) took third.

OCC head coach Anthony Iacopetti, who had already witnessed over a dozen state championships on the men's and women's teams, pumped his fist and screamed with joy for Pabalan as his first-place time earned the Pirates a crucial 20 points as they moved ahead of Riverside City College for third place in the team standings. 

"That was such a huge race for us," Iacopetti said. "I was so proud of Diego, who had struggled a bit this weekend. But he hung tough and swam his heart out. We were trying to plan out how many points we'd get in each race and we had Diego taking third because he was the third seed in the race. You just never know sometimes."

Also adding to the point totals for the Pirates was standout breaststroke specialist Jonathan Panchak, who managed to repeat his impressive performance the day before. On Friday, he broke the State Meet record in the 100 breaststroke in the prelims, then, broke it again to win the finals. 

On Saturday, Panchak broke the previous record with a 1:58.59 in the prelims, then, went out and broke away from the pack with an incredible time of 1:58.37 to win the gold medal. Sierra's Alex Shibata was a DISTANT second with a time of 2:02.93, while defending champion Adrien Deloffre of RCC (2:03.48) settled for third.

Assistant coach Adam Lee summed things up best when describing Panchak when he said, "That kid is a stud."

In the final event of the meet -- the 400 freestyle relay -- Coast carried an 18-point lead over Riverside for third place. The Tigers won the state title in the event (3:01.43) and earned 40 points, but the Pirate foursome of Sooud Altayyar, Alex Furlong, Erik Lindsey and Tyler Connors managed to earn 26 points with a sixth-place time of 3:08.03, keeping Coast ahead of RCC by four points for the team bronze medal.