Coast women capture conference crown!

RIVERSIDE -- It was another dominating performance by the Orange Coast College women's swim team as the Pirates captured the Orange Empire Conference team title on Saturday at Riverside City College.

With five individual OEC titles and three relay victories, the Pirates capped off the three-day event with a winning team score of 776.50. Golden West was a distant second with 599 points, while Riverside City College took third with 508 points.

Lexi Hill helped put the icing on the cake for the Pirates in the 200-yard butterfly. Hill not only won the OEC title with a time of 2 minutes, 13 seconds, she broke the course record of 2:14.97, which was set by herself in the preliminaries.

Coast had a pair of swimmers -- Alexa Clayfield and Rebecca Aguilar -- earn a pair of invidual titles throughout the championships.

Clayfield dominated the field in the 200 individual medley with a time of 4:42.06, which was not only a meet record, it was 20 seconds better than the next-fastest swimmer in the event (Saddleback's Elise Miner -- 5:03.72). In the 200 IM, Clayfield battled OCC teammate Chloe Kim for the top spot and eventually claimed her second OEC title with a time of 2:11.12. Kim earned her first of three top-three performances and took second with a time of 2:12.85 as the Pirate duo cleared the rest of the field by over six seconds. Kim also picked up top-three times in the 100 butterfly (3rd, 1:00.1) and the 200 butterfly (2nd, 2:19.2).

Joining the double-title club was Pirate standout Rebecca Aguilar, who blistered the way through the pool to capture conference titles in the 50 freestyle (24.08) and the 100 freestyle (51.76). She nearly pulled off a third title in the 100 butterfly, but settled for second place with a time of 57.97.

Aguilar was also a part of three conference championship relay teams for the Pirates, joining Kim, Clayfield and Nacinda Paap to claim the 800 free relay (7:51.07) and later, joined Kim, Clayfield and Audrey Hung for the 200 free relay title (1:38.33). Kim, Clayfield, Aguilar and Kestlyn Hickey also earned the top spot in the 400 free relay with a time of 3:34.21.

Coast also claimed several top-three times throughout the three-day event, including the 200 medley relay team of Hickey, Aguilar, Hung and Valerie Acosta (2nd, 1:51.29), the 400 medley relay team of Hickey, Acosta, Kim and Hung (2nd, 4:09.43), Candis Buck in 3-meter diving (2nd, 227.55 points) and 1-meter diving (2nd, 217.25 points), Hickey in the 50 free (T-3rd, 24.98), Acosta in the 100 breaststroke (2nd, 1:11.29) and Paap in the 200 breaststroke (2nd, 2:35.0), 500 free (2nd, 5:23.66) and 1,650 free (3rd, 18:58.22).

The Pirates will now prepare for the 2015 California Community College Athletic Associaton State Swim Meet, which takes place April 30-May 2 at East Los Angeles College.