Five TNT swimmers competed at the 2017 Swim Meet of Champions, this year held at the Irvine complex opposed to the traditional Mission Viejo venue due to re-construction of the Mission Viejo pool, and our swimmers came away with three time improvements, a rate that was led by Visalia’s Lauren Geiger who improved one of her three events, but improved it twice: once as a time trial event, and then again in the actual event. Lauren’s highest place was in the 100 meter butterfly, where her improvement to 1:08.05 finished 70th there.
Four of our swimmers performed well enough in the preliminary heats to either earn a spot in one of three final heats outright, or close enough to be scratched into a C-final heat. Danielle Albright was the top seed in the C-final of the 200 breaststroke after swimming a 2:46.64 in the preliminary heats, and then her time of 2:47.96 in the C-final was enough for a 21st place finish in the event. She also swam 1:18.88 in the preliminary heats of the 100 breaststroke, enough for a 31st place finish, and then scratches left her at the 1st alternate position (25th) where she was able to compete in lane 1 of the C-final, swim a full two seconds faster than the morning swim to a time of 1:16.89, and finished 18th overall.
Alonso Escobedo competed in the 200 meter backstroke, and swam a 2:25.45 in the preliminary heats to also finish 31st, and then was scratched into finals where he didn’t compete. However, he did finish 37th in preliminary heats of the 200 IM on the last day of the meet with a time of 2:18.56, which was close enough to scratch him into the C-finals where his time of 2:19.47 finished 23rd in the event.
JD Koster earned a final swim in three of his six total events that he competed in for the meet, and all three of his finals took place on day one and two. He swam 2:14.46 in his strongest event, 200 fly, during the preliminary heats to finish 24th, and then improved his preliminary time to 2:13.19 and finished 18th overall. On day two he posted a time of 2:36.33 in the preliminary heats of the 200 breaststroke to place 28th going into finals, and then swam 2:39.96 to actually move up to 22nd overall. His last final was also on day two, but in the 400 IM where he posted a lifetime best of 4:54.34 to finish 25th in the morning, one place out of finals, and then scratched into the C-final where he swam a time of 5:00.34 to finish 24th overall.
Our last finalist was Preston Niayesh who competed in two events, and swam two finals, first by posting a time of 2:36.98 in the 200 meter breaststroke to finish 29th, but close enough to scratch into the C-final where he posted a time of 2:37.20, and finished 21st in the event. His last final was in the 100 meter breaststroke, where his preliminary time of 1:10.03 was 28th, and again close enough to scratch into the C-finals where he posted a time of 1:09.33 to again finish 21st in the event.