The Eastside boys finished fourth and the girls finished seventh in 2A at the FHSAA Swimming and Diving Championships on Saturday at the FAST pool in Ocala.
Eastside’s Chris Jeong, Alexander Han, Eric Gong and Abraham Burangulov combined to score 149.5 points to finish fourth behind Mater Lakes Academy (221), Bishop Kenny (212), and Fort Walton Beach (150) on Saturday night.
The Rams took home a lot of hardware as the top eight earned medals.
Top individual performances were turned in by Gong (junior), third in the 200-yard freestyle (1 minute, 41.64 seconds), and sixth in the 100 butterfly (50.76); Burangulov (senior), 12th in the 50 freestyle (22.19), and third in the 100 breaststroke (58.10); Han (freshman),11th in the butterfly (52.07), seventh in the 500 freestyle (4:46.40); and Joeng (sophomore), sixth in the 500 freestyle (4:44.70) and the 100 backstroke (52.25)
The foursome teamed up to finish fourth in the 400-yard relay 3:13.16 (Gong, Han, Jeong, Burangulov), and the 200 medley relay (Jeong, Burangulov, Gong and Han).
Eastside girls finished seventh with 91 points.
“I was so happy for the girls. They faced some adversity in the very first event placing ninth, one place off the podium. But they didn’t sulk or let it phase them. They went out and won the consolation heat and were stellar the rest of the night. Any time you place in the top 10 overall at State is a special season” said Eastside coach Jon Allen. “The boys had their second highest finish at state in school history at fourth. The competition in 2A really stepped up on the boys side this year. They went faster in both relays than they did last year but placed lower. We had hoped to place a little higher overall, but it’d be foolish to not celebrate six individual medals, two relay medals and three school records.”
Top individual performances were turned in by: sophomore Elise Panna, third in the 100 freestyle (52.75) and in the backstroke (57.25); senior Noelle Panna, 10th in the 500 freestyle (5:13.57); sophomore Juliette Bruijnzeel,15th in the 200 freestyle (2:00.88), and 13th in the 500 freestyle(5:20.13).
The Rams’ 400 relay team (Elise Panna, Bruijnzeel, Cecilia Duda and Noelle Panna) finished fifth in 3:41.33 and their 200 medley relay finished ninth in 1:52.63 (Elise Panna, Duda, Noelle Panna, and Bruijnzeel).
Union County junior Eva Whitehead had a historic day in the 1A finals on Friday.
Whitehead entered as the favorite in the 200 individual medley and qualified first in the preliminaries on Friday morning with a 2:02.88. In the finals, she lowered her personal best of 2:01.44 to 2:00.01 to win by 1.28 seconds.
“Her club coach, John Hulvey, has really pushed her to another limit,” said Union County head coach and father, Brad Whitehead. “He told me today that she’s got a two double oh and he was dead on it.”
Whitehead was fourth after the first stroke, the butterfly, third after the second stroke, the backstroke, but took the lead on the third stroke, the breaststroke and never looked back.
“I was pretty nervous coming into the finals,” said Whitehead, who finished 22nd in last year’s preliminaries (2:12.19) and did not advance to the finals. “I really focused on the breaststroke and was able to bring it home from that. I was really happy I was able to.”
The time was the 30th fastest time in FHSAA history, the first state swimming title in Union County school history and was under the All American Automatic, top 100 high school swimmers in the USA, qualifying time of 2:01.38.
Whitehead followed her 200 individual medley gold with a fourth place in the 100 breaststroke in a personal best and All American Consideration time of 1:03.25.
Whitehead scored all Union County’s 35 points to place 16th.
P.K. Yonge finished 33rd with nine points from senior Alessandra Quintana who finished ninth in the 100 backstroke for the second time in a row. Quintana set a personal best of 57.23 in the preliminaries and in the consolation finals swam 57.94.
In the boys competition, the Blue Wave’s Jackson Chase finished 12th in the 100 backstroke (53.56). That earned P.K. Yonge a 39th place finish with 5 points.