SUNRISE SWIMMING: Coronado sweeps region titles

Coronado coach David Stump certainly was keeping track of how far ahead his Cougars were in the final stretch of the Class 4A Sunrise Region swimming and diving championships.

The Cougars led the way on the scoreboard in both the boys and girls meets to clinch a pair of titles at UNLV.

“I knew after the 200 relays the meet was over,” Stump said. “I knew at that point we were up enough, and I didn’t think they had enough in those last two events to catch us.”

Coronado’s girls team finished the meet with 489 points with the boys finishing with 511 points.

Both teams edged out Green Valley whose teams finished with 455½ points and 442 points, respectively.

“It was a nice feeling of relief that we could just kind of relax for those last couple of events. And it’s nice being able to tell the kids going into that last relay that we had the meet,” Stump said.

It was a numbers game for Coronado as Tayler Luna and Sean Marchewski won the only individual events for the Cougars Saturday.

Luna took first in the girls 50-yard freestyle in 24.73, and Marchewski won the boys 100 freestyle in 48.31 to help the Cougars to the sweep.

Coronado also won the final relay of the meet, the boys 400 freestyle relay, in 3:13.01 to put the cherry on top of an already successful day in the pool.

“It’s a good step forward for state because we did not swim our best meet today,” Stump said. “I know we can step up and be faster for the meet up north.”

Stump has more for his team to work on as they prepare for the state meet and look to win the school’s first ever boys state title and its first girls state title since 2007.

“Like we’ve been harping on them all year long, starts, turns and finishes,” Stump said. “It’s the little things when you get to this level, that’s what makes all the difference in the world.”

Green Valley feel short in its attempt to win the region meet, but it did get some record-breaking performances from senior Abby Richter in her final region meet of her high school career.

Richter was the lead swimmer in the 200 medley relay, where the Gators took first with a time of 1:45.29 and broke their own record of 1:48.24 set in the 2015 region meet.

She also swam lead in the 400 freestyle relay, where the Gators broke the record set in 2012 with a time of 3:28.95, beating the previous mark of 3:33.17.

Richter also beat her own record in the 100 backstroke with a time of 54.22, besting her 54.75 in the 2015 region meet.

“She had good swims, she was looking forward to that and looking forward to state,” Green Valley coach Bob Swift said. “She wants to try and probably drop the records a little bit more.”

After the meet, Richter was named the girls Class 4A Sunrise Region swimmer of the year.

Foothill’s Denver Renner was named the boys swimmer of the year after taking first in the 200 freestyle (1:42.36) and the 100 butterfly (51.50) on Saturday.

Contact reporter Bill Slane at bslane@reviewjournal.com or 702-380-4559. Follow @bill_slane on Twitter.