LONG BEACH – The UC Santa Barbara men’s swim team wrapped up its first Pac-10 Swimming Championships by setting two more school records on Saturday evening at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach. Junior Chris Peterson broke the UCSB 100 freestyle record and then helped set a new record in the 400 free relay.
Peterson’s school record in the 100 freestyle marked his second of the weekend. He posted a time of 43.35 seconds in the event’s finals – surpassing Olympian Jason Lezak’s 1998 record by .05 seconds – and took eighth place. On Thursday, Peterson broke Lezak’s 50 free record.
Teammate Kevin Ferguson won the consolation heat, placing ninth overall, in the 100 free with a time of 43.53, just .06 seconds slower than his time in the morning’s preliminaries. Ryan Hanni touched the wall 13th in 43.98; his prelims time was 43.56 seconds. Peterson, Ferguson and Hanni all posted NCAA ‘B’ cuts in the event.
In the 400 free relay, the Gaucho ‘A’ team – which consists of Peterson, Hanni, Garrett Thompson and Ferguson – placed fourth with a school-record time of 2:52.90, which broke the previous record set in 2009 by a whopping 2.03 seconds. The Gauchos’ time is a NCAA ‘B’ cut.
The UCSB ‘B’ relay of Andrew Latimer, Andrew Dossa, Tim Freeman and Lucas Norman finished in 3:02.64 and the ‘C’ team of Dylan Templeton, Alexander Campbell, Mike London and Scott Nocco finished in 3:06.04.
Ryan Garcia was the first Gaucho to compete in the evening’s finals. The junior took 19th in the 200 backstroke with a time of 1:52.55. He had swum a season-best time of 1:48.85 earlier in the day.
In the 200 breaststroke, Tim Freeman was the Gauchos’ top finisher taking 12th in 2:00.86, which was just .27 seconds slower than his morning swim.
The final individual event of the meet was the 200 butterfly. Max Horrell and Randy Aakhus both qualified for the event’s consolation final. Horrell placed 12th overall in 1:48.40 and Aakhus took 14th in 1:50.42, though he swam the prelims in 1:49.83.
UCSB finished the meet in sixth place with 184 points, edging out former Big West foe Cal Poly by 26 points.
The Gauchos will find out next week if they have been invited to the NCAA Championships, which are being held in Minneapolis, Minn., on March 24-26.
