Vaqueros take fourth in State with 7 school records

SBCC completed an excellent State Swimming & Diving meet on Saturday with three more school records and a fourth-place finish at East L.A. College.

Fourth place is the best finish ever for the two-time WSC champion Vaqueros, who've only had a swim team for three years. They finished 12th and 8th in the State in their first two years.

Orange Coast ran away with the women's title with 569 points in the 44-team competition. Sierra was second at 337, followed by Santa Rosa (294) and the Vaqueros (281), who were just 13 points shy of third place.

"Santa Rosa got 32 points from diving and I'm looking forward to adding diving to our program," said coach Chuckie Roth. "This was an amazing group of girls, I was so proud to coach them. They all about great ethics, hard work and integrity."

Santa Barbara set three school records on Day 3 of the State meet, topped by a third-place finish in the meet-ending 400 free relay. Alex Humann, Kendra Carr, Addison Seale and Reese Ellestad swam the last relay and broke the school record by four seconds in 3:36.81.

"It was a monster come-from-behind finish," said Roth, whose team broke seven school records in the three-day meet. "Seale caught up and then Ellestad sealed the deal with an amazing anchor leg to edge out Sierra for third."

Seale took fourth in the 200 breaststroke in a school-record time of 2:28.28. Haley Crowley was 14th in 2:35.77. Seale recorded a 3rd, 4th and 5th to score 45 points in the meet.

Kristina Hill notched her second school record with a fourth-place effort in the 1650 free. The 28-year-old teacher from Santa Barbara High broke Katherine Warren's school mark by five-tenths of a second and shaved a startling 28.8 seconds off her PR which she set while winning the WSC Final.

Ellestad was 10th in the 100 free in 54.26, Humann was 11th in 54.79 and Carr took 14th in 55.23.