One month ago, five TNT swimmers competed at the 2016 Western Zone Age Group Championships held in Salt Lake City, Utah with CCS Head Zone Coach, Joclyn Thiessen while representing Team CCS, the All Star team that represents Central California Swimming. Our five include Visalia’s Janessa Bringe (13-14), Peyton Costa (11-12), Visalia’s Layla Flores (11-12), Ava Olson (10-under), and Alexa Wong (10-under).
Layla Flores was our first finalist, swimming to the championship finals in the 100 meter backstroke on day 1, and improved nearly three seconds to a 1:11.61 in the preliminary heats, swimming well under Samantha Goates team record of 1:12.24 set at the Senior Q meet in 2002. Samantha Goates is among our all-time top performers, becoming nationally ranked, competing for LSU at the D1 NCAA Championships. On day 1, Janessa Bringe earned a scoring top-16 finish swimming 10:21.83 in the time based 800 meter freestyle, and finishing 15th in the event.
Day 2 was Thursday; Alexa Wong swam to a consolation final in the 100 meter freestyle after swimming 1:13.13 in the preliminary heats on that day, and also qualified for the consolation heat in the 200 IM. Peyton Costa also made the consolation heat, swimming a 2:36.03 in the preliminary heats, and then winning the consolation heat with a time of 2:33.48.
On day 3, Ava Olson advances to the consolation final of the 100 meter breaststroke, improving her time by nearly two seconds to a 1:34.80, and finishing 15th in that final heat. Layla Flores sat in the 1st alternate position of the same event after swimming her best time of 1:24.28, and then went on to place 10th in the 50 meter backstroke improving her preliminary swim to a 33.54, after swimming her fastest time of 33.82 in the prelims.
Day 4 resulted in Layla Flores not only being the only TNT swimmer to improve 100% of her times, the only TNT swimmer to advance to a championship top-8 final heat, but also earned the most second swims for any TNT swimmer as she competed in the 11-12 200 meter breaststroke event, and improved her time by over two seconds to a 3:01.74, and finished 15th in the event. Layla was joined as a finalist for the day by Ava Olson, competing in her first Zone meet, and second final event, where her time of 1:20.21 was enough for a 14th place finish there, and an improvement from her preliminary swim.