By Michael Aronson
Three different swimmers broke two or more school records in the CIF finals meet at Riverside College May 12. Patrick Kang ’12 broke three records and Max Quilici ’12 and Colin Lynch ’14 each broke two.
Kang broke his first record in the 100-yard breaststroke, swimming against three of his club team training partners in the event.
Kang touched the wall in 57.41 seconds, grabbing the fourth slot, but his club teammate Hunter Cobleigh edged Kang by just over a second to grab the title.
Though Kang lost the race, he set a school record in the event and outswam defending champion Peter Kropp from rival Loyola by 0.16 seconds.
“I honestly wasn’t expecting to go anywhere near that time,” Kang said. “When [Cobleigh] races with me in practice, he blows me out of the water, so I was pretty happy getting as close as I did to him. I just wanted to keep up with him, and at least I still have a chance to beat him when we race in practice.”
Kang’s record-breaking meet did not stop with the breaststroke.
He set records along with John Chu ’15, Lynch and Quilici in the 200-yard free relay with a time of 1:27.17 and in the 200-yard medley relay with Andy Liu ’14, Lynch and Quilici, beating the old record of 1:38.96 with a time of 1:36.13 seconds.
“For the relays, our teams swam extraordinarily fast,” Kang said. “If we swam our regular times, we wouldn’t have broken the record.”
“The fact that we did this at my very last meet as a Harvard-Westlake athlete made it all the more special,” Quilici said. “I can’t think of a more perfect way to end the season. It will be an honor to come back to Harvard-Westlake and see my name on the record board at the new pool, right up there with those of my teammates and graduates who I look up to.”
The boys finished 13th overall with 84.5 points in the meet, far superior to last year’s four-point performance at CIF finals. Their regular season culminated in a 103-67 loss to Crespi to finish 4-2 for the year.
