KAILUA-KONA – Hawaii Prep swam alone in its own lane for most of the afternoonw on Saturday at the Kona Community Aquatic Center at Old Kona Airport Park. Ka Makani couldn’t find a lot of competition elsewhere at the BIIF championships.
KAILUA-KONA – Hawaii Prep swam alone in its own lane for most of the afternoonw on Saturday at the Kona Community Aquatic Center at Old Kona Airport Park. Ka Makani couldn’t find a lot of competition elsewhere at the BIIF championships.
And it’s not like the rest of the field wasn’t putting up good times. It’s was just that Ka Makani was just in a class of its own, racking up points and winning both the boys and girls BIIF titles at the championship meet by a combined 235 points.
“We went into the meet with the idea that we wanted to improve,” said HPA coach Mark Noetzel. “That is what we put value in today — individual improvement.”
In the girls race, Ka Makani was led by their relay teams, picking up 190 team points. Waiakea finished a distant second at 92, followed by Hilo (86), Kamehameha (51), Kealakehe (37), Konawaena (30), Kohala (19), Parker (11), St. Joseph (9 and Christian Liberty (9).
The HPA boys won all but one race on the way to a 220-point performance. Lost in HPA’s dominance, Waiakea picked up another second place finish with 83 points, followed by Kealakehe (79), Hilo (46), Kamehameha (46), Keaau (23), Konawaena (8), Parker (5) and Christian Liberty (4).
“We did really great and we all moved up,” HPA boys team captain Tyler Alt said. “I am really excited to see how the team does at state and I can’t wait to watch the girls perform. They worked hard for this.”
As a complete team, Ka Makani won 19 of the 22 races on Saturday and went 20 of 24 including the diving championships, which took place at HPA.
In eight of the races, Hawaii Prep broke either the BIIF or league championship meet record, or both.
“The records that went down, I am very proud and honored to take them from the fabulous swimmers that came before us,” Noetzel said. “In the relays, we are taking some records that others owned and that we owned as well. We have done our work in the pool at practice and we are fortunate to have a few horses in the stable to pick from. We also had a few surprises that showed up, giving us a little more flexibility going into the state meet.
The three HPA girls relay teams could simply not be beat in the water. All three came away with record-setting performances.
The day got off to a good start with the 200-yard individual medley relay. The Hawaii Prep team of Kira Parker, Maile Lawson, Tereza Kanalosova and Karly Noetzel placed first in a time of 1 minute and 38.19 seconds. The time was good enough for both a league and championship meet record. The long standing previous record of 1:49.95 was set way back in 2002.
In the girls 200-yard freestyle relay, Noetzel teamed up with a new HPA group, comprised of Janelle Laros, Frida Berglund and team captain Taylor Doherty to set a new record of 1:40.41, breaking the league record of 1:40.71 set in 2002, but coming up shy of the championship meet record set last year by an HPA squad that included three of the four current members.
In the final girls relay race of the evening, the team of Kanalosova, Berglund, Doherty and Parker set a new mark in the 400-yard freestyle relay. Winning the race by more than 13 seconds, the team finished in a time of 3:33.69, breaking the league record of 3:37.97 set earlier in the year by the same team, and the championship meet record of 3:40.85 set in 2012.
“All the relay races really stood out to me,” Doherty said. “We have high expectations to win at state or at least be pretty darn close. We need to win two out of the three races to make a statement and we can do it, we just need to keep doing what we are doing.”
Kanalosova also picked up an individual league and championship meet record with a time of 2:08.27 in the 200-yard IM. Parker broke a pair of individual league and championship meet records. She set a new mark of 52.14 in the 100-yard freestyle and 57.43 in the 100-yard backstroke.
Lawson added a league and championship meet record in the 100-yard breaststroke, finishing in 1:06.92.
Picking up two of the three wins not achieved by an HPA swimmer, Hilo’s Shea Tsuha won a sprint to the finish in the girls 50 yard freestyle, breaking a league and championship record set in 2002 with a time of 24.18. She also won the 100 yard fly with a time of 58.41.