More solid performances for Pirates after Day 2 of State Meet
COSTA MESA -- The hardware continues to accumulate for the Orange Coast College men's and women's swim/dive teams as the Pirates take on the best of the best in Day 2 of the 3C2A Men's and Women's Swimming and Diving State Championships on Friday at the OCC Aquatics Pavilion.
On the men's side, the Pirates are neck and neck with defending state champion Sierra College with the Wolverines leading the way with 439.5 points, followed by OCC (369), Mt. San Antonio (209) and Cuesta and El Camino (176 each).
For the women, the Pirates currently are tied for seventh place with 152 points with Mt. SAC, with Santa Barbara City College holding a commanding lead with 322 points, followed by Santa Rosa (205.5).
OCC's men's 200 medley relay picked up another gold medal for the hosts and the foursome of Gideon Stemmons, Christian Perez, Ryan Xu and Mason Parker continued their strong work, edging out Sierra by just .12 for a winning time of 1 minute, 30.22 seconds. Sierra gave the Pirates a serious push at the end but settled for the silver medal with a 1:30.34, followed by Cuesta's bronze medal time of 1:30.77.
Stemmons wasn't done collecting medals for the day as he earned the bronze medal in the 100 backstroke with a time of 50.51, just behind Mt. SAC's Eric Yeh (49.92) and Santa Rosa's Andrew Morris (50.32).
In the last race of the evening, the men's 800 freestyle relay, OCC's Aasa Araki, Darius Wallach, Perez and Gavin Mcneal put forth a strong effort and took home the bronze medal with a time of 6:51.13.
For the OCC women, their lone top-5 performance came in the 800 free relay, where Paige Woodside, Rylie Fox, Gia Cadiz and Kiley Kawai finished fifth overall with a time of 8:09.15.
Woodside earned a finals berth in the 200 free, where she finished 6th with a time of 1:57.66.
Other top performances for the Pirates included OCC's 200 medley relay (Kawai, Cadis, Woodside, Fox), (7th, 1:51.19) and Kawai in the 100 backstroke (9th, 1:00.87).
The third-and-final day of competition will take place on Saturday at OCC, with the finals kicking off at 4 p.m.
