One of the last age group championship meets every year is the Winter Age Group Championships hosted by San Diego Imperial Swimming, and this year’s meet was held at the William Wagner Aquatic Center in Oceanside, California over the third weekend of December. Nineteen TNT swimmers competed at the meet, with Porterville’s 12-year old Regan Hildreth leading the way. Regan competed in eight events, earned top-8 finishes in all eight, and came away as the event champion in three of those eight events. Her gold medal performance in the 50-yard breaststroke event places her as the only TNT swimmer in the history of the team to swim under the 32-second mark as a 12-under athlete, and she did it twice (prelims and finals). Her time of 31.12 nearly surpassed the 31-second mark, and fell under Danielle Albright’s previous team record of 32.18 by just over a full second. Her time currently stands as the third fastest nationally for girls at age 12, postings which began at the beginning of September. In comparison, her time would have maintained the fifth ranked time during the previous competition year (9/1/21 to 8/31/22) where only four swimmers across the nation swam under 31 seconds (none in California, by the way).
Our next highest performer went to Hanford’s 10-year old Madison Bean who posted top-8 finishes in three of her eight events, and scored in five of them. Her highest finish was a 4th place touch in the 01-under 200 freestyle where she posted a time of 2:32.49. Her other top-8 finishes included the 100 fly (6th), and 50 fly (8th) events. She scored 4 points in both the 100 breaststroke, and 100 IM events where she touched 13th. Our only other top-8 finish went to Tarrin Nelms who finished 4th in the 10-under girls 50 breaststroke (39.52). Those swimmers who finished among the top-16 in each event also scored at the meet, and these TNT swimmers included: Madison Bean, Samantha Dolan, Chase Fisher, Lexi Krigbaum, Noa Martin, Peyton Martin, Tarrin Nelms, and Ivan Roidriguez. Congratulations to the following swimmers for posting All Time Top-100 rankings: Madison Bean, Mia Buller, Regan Hildreth, Peyton Martin, Amy Murphy, and Ivan Rodriguez. Congratulations also go to Kaitlyn Bean, Liam Buller, Carter Christenson, Mia DeLaTorre, Emma Taylor, and Rylee Umscheid for qualifying and competing at the meet.
