The AquaDons season opener was against the Marshall Eagles, a smaller school from Pasadena. Marshall opened up the meet with a medley relay victory, followed by a 1st/3rd place swim to catch the Dons off guard, scoring 17 against the Dons' 11. But the Dons answered back with a 1st/2nd place victory in the 200 IM, lead by Freshmen Dominic Ramos and Matt Calderon, putting the Dons up 23-20. From that point on, the Dons never looked back, finishing the meet with 102 points to Marshall's 56.

The Eagles won 2 of the 3 relays, earning 16 points to the AquaDons 22 thanks to two teams scoring points in the 200 and 400 Relay.  In individual events, the Dons racked by 7 out of 8 victories, scoring 82-40. Of the 8 individual races, the team split 1st place victories evenly, 4 to 4, but of those 4 - 1st place victories, the Dons had 3 1st/2nd place finished to the Eagles goose egg. The best Marshall could muster was a single 1st/3rd place combo. 

Before dismissing the victory to El Rancho's team size, I ran the points again, removing El Rancho swimmers so each event evenly matched the number of swimmers. If Marshall had two swimmers, I only counted the points for our two swimmer. If Marshall couldn't post a swimmer or a relay, I only counted the points from one of my teams. The result was much closer, with Marshall leading through four events, the lead changing for twice more, but El Rancho would still have come up victorious 68-60.

Special acknowledgements for:
Swimmers taking 1st place: Dominic Ramos (200 IM), Sean Valencia (100 Breast), and our Senior Captain, Devin Clardy (50 Free & 100 Fly).
Swimmers dropping time: Devin Clardy  (-1.1sec in  his part of the Medley Relay, -0.5sec in 50  Free, -1.9sec in his part of  200 Relay, and -1.3sec in 100 Breast);  Daniel Bernal  (-1.8 sec in 100 Free); Sean Valencia  (-5.6 sec in 100 Breast).  The following swimmers dropped  time in their part of the 200 Free Relay:  Leo Rivas (-0.2sec),  Jacob Salazar (-4.3sec), Matt Calderon  (-4sec), Daniel Bernal (-1.1sec), and  Isaiah Figueroa (-0.1sec). The following swimmers dropped time in their part of the  400 Free Relay: Julian Chavez (-3.8sec), Leo Rivas (-4.8sec), Bernardo "Berny" Perez Cerna (-5.4sec), Jordan Bravo (-2.3sec) and Isaiah Figueroa (-2sec)
Top 3 point earners: Senior Devin Clardy (24points) and Freshman Dominic Ramos & Matt Calderon (18points).
 

JV Swimmers Drop Time

Without a JV team to compete against, the JV Boys swam against the JV Girls. But the week between our Blue Grey meet and today's meet against Marshall proved to spark some improvement. Congrats to out JV swimmers dropping times:
Ruben Magallanes: -11 seconds in his 200 Free; -5.3 seconds in his 50-split of the 200 Relay; -1.5 seconds in his 100-split of the 400 Relay.
Aaron Salinas: -21 seconds in his 200 Free; -5.7 seconds in his 100 Free; -5.4 seconds in his 100-split of the 400 Relay.
Matthew Cruz-Ramirez: -12.8 sec in his 100-split of the 400 Relay.