Tigers swimming stroke in full stride
Boys take second overall, girls claim third
The Taos Tigers traveled north to Farmington to compete on Friday and Saturday (Jan. 6 and 7) in the Panther Invite hosted by Piedra Vista. The competition was
held at the Farmington Aquatic Center, which features a 50-meter Olympic-size pool.
Based on the total number of points won for both the boys and girls categories the Farmington Scorpions blew the competition out of the water, taking first place by significant margins; the Scorpions won by 441 points in the boys division and by 172 points in the girls division.
The Taos Tigers did hold their own as they bested Farmington in a number of races. Taos took first in the girls 100-yard freestyle, the girls 400-yard freestyle relay, the boys 100-yard backstroke, the boys 100-yard freestyle, the boys 200yard freestyle and the boys 200yard freestyle relay.
There were plenty of personal bests for Taos: Jacqueline Limas improved in the 100-yard butterfly, going from 1:09.91 to 1:09.71; Sierra Griego improved in the Girls 100-yard freestyle, going from 1:00.70 to 59.60; Dillon Brown improved in the 100-yard backstroke, going from 1:01.34 to 1:00.40; Juan Romo improved in the 100-yard freestyle, going from 54.49 to 53.19.
Most notably the Taos boys relay time reduced their seed time in the 200-yard freestyle relay, previously a 2:03.89, all the way to a 1:39.29 — which was a time good enough to beat Farmington with at least 10 seconds to spare. This is a fact that can be explained by Taos not having trotted out their fastest set of swimmers in for the relay to date, which would be, altogether: Dillon Brown, Eduardo A. Munoz, Lorenzo Cordova and Juan Romo.
said she has seen constant improvements from her Tigers.
“We’ve had more personal bests at every meet than I’ve ever seen,” said Tigers coach Greta Kuehl .
She explained part of the reason may be the additional help the program has had this year.
“We’ve got three coaches now and Jeff [Serpan] is really amazing. He was an All-American high school swimmer and a collegiate swimmer,” Kuehl said. “I mean I was a collegiate swimmer but he was Division I.”
She said the program seems to be trending in the right direction. Not just for this year but for the next year as well. “We’ve got a whole group of brand new swimmers, like they’ve never competed before,” Coach Kuehl continued. “Yeah, they are dropping times like crazy. Like they’re they’re going to be swimmers. They’re going to be competitive in another year. So that’s pretty cool.”
The Taos Tigers will head next to Albuquerque for the Albuquerque Academy Swimming Invitational on Saturday (Jan. 14).