At the 19th National Junior Games, in the swimming competition, 16-year old Andy Arteta swam a 15:31.42 in the boys’ 1500 freestyle. Not only did that win the race for him by nearly a minute, it broke the 16 & under National Age Record of 15:36.64 set by the great Ricardo Monasterio in 1996. Monasterio would go on to be an All-American at Florida in the United States, and competed for Venezuela at four Olympic Games (1996, 2000, 2004, 2008). He was also a two-time Pan Am Games Champion in 2003 in both the 400 and 1500 freestyles. Arteta has 16 seconds to go to get Monasterio’s overall National Record. Arteta also dropped 12 seconds from his 14th-place finish at the World Junior Championships. Full meet results available here…
…According to the South China Morning Post, a 12-year old Chinese swimmer nearly drowned at a North District swim meet on Sunday after setting a new Meet Record. Yau Tsz-lam, 12 years old, won the 200 breast, 200 free relay, and 50 fly, but lost consciousness after getting in to warm up for the 100 breast. We couldn’t immediately find results for Sunday’s session, but Yau was a 2:49.26 in the 200 lc IM on Saturday. Officials say that he has regained consciousness, but is still “partly paralyzed”. Few details were available about what happened, as officials at his school said that it could have been anything from hitting his head on the bottom of the pool, or exhaustion from participating in too many events…
…High school swimming across the country is warming up, and in Connecticut, at a meet which could rightly be seen as a State Championship preview, The girls from Greenwich dominated their opponents from Wilton by a score of 109-77. They were lead by freshman Olivia Hallisey, who won the 200 free in 2:00.58 and Christina Frias, who won both the 100 back (1:00.38) and 100 fly (57.85). Greenwich were the Connecticut Class LL State Champions in the fall of 2012, while Wilton finished 3rd in the class L meet. Both were in the top 10 of the Open Championship…
…The team is still far from competing for state championships, but in upstate New York, the girls from Oswego High, led by Josh Lerch, got their season off to a good start. Swimming against Hilton High school, the quartet of Brenna Riley, Mariah Metcalf, Caitlin Gorton, and Brooke Morriseau broke a 15-year old school record by two seconds in the 200 medley relay, swimming a 1:54.41. They’ve still got a ways to go to hit an automatic state qualifying time, but for a team that didn’t send a single swimmer to the State Championship meet last year, reaching these new heights in the season’s first meet, and with four underclassmen to boot, is a good start to 2013.