The Clark County Sandpipers of Nevada Swim Club ended an impressive 2005 season with its boys team capturing first place and its overall team taking second place in the Southern California Winter 'AA' Age Group Championships held Dec. 9-11 at the Desert Breeze Aquatic Center.
The meet, which has been hosted by the Sandpipers since 2002, featured more than 800 participants from Southern Nevada and Southern California and was the most-competitive meet to date, according to Sandpipers head coach Ron Aitken.
Aitken's boys team made the most news, winning the title on the final evening of the competition, while the girls team finished second, 200 points behind Irvine (Calif.) Nova Aquatics in the women's competition. The Sandpipers finished second as a team overall, just 100 points behind the larger team from Irvine Nova Aquatics.
Other local swim clubs that participated in the meet included the Boulder City-Henderson Heatwave (Third Place, 2,682 points); Team Rebel Aquatics (10th place, 846 points); Desert Storm Swimming (11th, 785 points) and the Red Rock Swimming Club (23rd, 254 points).
Top scorers in the meet from the Sandpipers included Jace Howanitz (112 points), who also swims for Aitken as a sophomore on Bishop Gorman High School's swim team; Olivia Barker (106 points), who is the daughter of the coach; Adam Henley (104 points); Dylan Wolf (98 points); Helen Yee (93 points); Helen's sister Michelle Yee (93 points), a junior at Sierra Vista who finished second in the 100-meter and fourth in the 200-meter freestyle in the Nevada state high school meet held last May; Shannon Colavito ( 92 points), who also swims for Aitken at Gorman and who was a member of the state championship relay team along with fellow Sandpiper teammates Howanitz, Ericka Christianson and Erika Antisdale; Jay Sirat (92 points); Garrett Peterson (92 points); Andrew Mrugala (89 points); Haley Powell (86 points); and Kevin Suarez (84 points).
The Sandpipers had a total of 41 swimmers scoring points for the team in individual events.
"If it wasn't for our depth in our relay swimmers, we wouldn't have been able to win," Aitken said.
Representing the Sandpipers -- who broke 21 team records at the meet -- and Las Vegas well was the Sandpipers boys 13-14 relay team of Jake Priest, Cutter Haupt, Cody Miller, Gianni Sesto and Jay Sirat, who set five new team relay records in all five events they competed in, and who won all five events at the meet, finishing with times just off the National top 16 recordable list.
Dylan Wolf turned in another stellar performance in the boys 11-12 age group setting four new team records in the 200 freestyle (1:57.29); the 500-meter freestyle (5:11.96); the 100-meter butterfly (59.14); and the 200-meter individual medley (2:11.12), where he topped teammate Miller's old mark of 2:12.61.
Barker, 10, also shined at the meet, setting three new team records and winning two gold medals. Barker set new Sandpiper marks in the 50-meter (36.32) and 100-meter (1:18.21) breaststroke, bettering the previous records set by older teammate Christianson. Barker also set a new team mark by besting her own record in the 100-meter individual medley (1:10.06).
Miller, 13, set two new team records in the 13-14 breaststroke age group, swimming the 100 in 1:03.66 and 200 in 2:19.66. Mrugala also established a new team record in the 15-16 boys 1,650-meter freestyle, finishing with a time of 17:34.94.
Other new team records were set by the 11-12 boys 400-meter medley relay team of Mitchell Antisdale, Billy Gravely, Wolf and Suarez as well as new senior 200/800-meter freestyle relays and 200-meter medley relay marks set by Peterson, Josh Guererro, Mrugala, Lindsey Mitchell and Lenard Lim.
All in all, Aitken was happy his team fought hard to keep in the points to win another championship.
"This meet was by far our best performance as a team to this point in the season," he said.
Overall, Aitken's Sandpipers had 184 new best times, set 21 team records and swam to four new sectional best times in the annual meet held at the Sandpipers' home pool.
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