Mission Viejo, Calif. - The Golden West College men's swim team battled their fellow Orange-Empire Conference in the first of two closed invitationals for the six member schools. The first one was held at Saddleback College. This meet proved helpful for a few reasons. First, it gave the team an opportunity to compete in the site of the 2025 OEC championships to be held in mid-April. Secondly, it gave lots of opportunities for swimmers to get a feel for some new events.

 

The Rustlers finished third overall to Orange Coast College (691) and Riverside CC (602) with 585 points of their own. Cypress was fourth with 250 points and Saddleback had 218.

 

There were plenty of top four results for this year's edition of Rustler swimmers. The individual medley races were fruitful for GWC as Jake M. Kiss won the 400 IM with a top early season result at the State level. His time was 4:13.75. Daigo Fujita, a freshman from Fountain Valley, made an impressive debut garnering a third place finish with a 4:27.75 mark. Ryan Novak, a freshman from Cypress High was also a third place winner in the 200 IM clocking a 2:04.18.

Finally, Boston Frost came up with a fourth place result in the 100 IM, speeding to a 1:00.81 time.

 

The backstroke events were strong for GWC as well. Topping the list were Fujita's win in the 100 back (59.84) and M. Kiss's triumph in the 200 back with a 2:00.96 swim. Following Jake home in the longer backstroke race were teammates Novak, second with 2:04.24, sophomore Joao Goncalves, third (2:13.16) and Jacob Stoddard, a sophomore from Westminster with a fourth place swim (2:15.05). Gavin Little added a third in the 100 back (1:00.77)

 

Perhaps the most dominant performance of the day was Novak's victory in the 1650 freestyle as he sped to a time of 16:39.56. This time should be ranked fairly high in the state at this point of the season.

Jack Wright, a freshman from Newport Harbor, cracked the top three in the 100 free with a 50.60 time and M. Kiss added a fourth place finish in the 200 fly completing the race with a time of 2:03.61.

 

Finally, there were only two relays in the meet but the Rustlers accorded themselves in good fashion. The 200 free relay team of Goncalves, M. Kiss, Little and Wright dropped three seconds to claim third place overall. The 200 medley relay of M. Kiss, Little, Novak and Stoddard picked up the runner-up points with a final time of 1:44.34.

 

Head Coach Tracy Maurer commented, "We are close to the half-way point in the season and our team is starting to take shape. There is still a lot of hard work to put in but I am optimistic at this point of the year. We look forward to returning to Saddleback's pool in April."

 

Next action for the Rustlers will be the Riverside College Invitational, a two day competition held March 7-8.