Girls swimming: Fast company

Barry Faulkner

NEWPORT BEACH - It’s not the big-time pressurized atmosphere of a

national meet, but Monday’s Sea View League girls swimming preliminaries

at Newport Harbor High were anything but an unsupervised workout.

“This is a very fast league,” said Newport Harbor High Coach Ken Lamont,

who was more than pleased with his team’s showing. “With Irvine, Laguna

Hills and Newport, we have the three best teams in Orange County. You

can’t cruise in this league.”

Amid this hardy competition, Harbor athletes posted the top qualifying

times in six of the eight varsity events.

Sophomore transfer Carly Geehr, who competed in the small-school Prep

League last year at Mayfield High in Pasadena, broke the meet record

while qualifying first (1:52.20) in the 200-yard freestyle. The previous

record of 1:53.04 was set last year by Irvine’s Erin Zehntner.

It was almost a second slower than her season best, however.

She also qualified first in the 100 backstroke (59.34), narrowly edging

Shauna Barnard of Laguna Hills to win her heat.

‘That’s going to be a great race Friday,” said Lamont, foreshadowing the

girls and boys league finals, which begin at 1 p.m., also at Newport.

Newport freshman Nicole Mackey, like Geehr an elite club swimmer,

qualified first in the 200 individual medley (2:06.82) and the 100

butterfly (57.27).

Freshman Hayley Peirsol qualified first in the 500 freestyle (5:09.27),

more than 13 seconds faster than her closest competitor.

Junior Jennifer Arrow rounded out the Sailor front-runners, posting the

top mark in the 100 breaststroke (1:07.90).

Newport senior Amy Murphy, who won the league 200 free crown as a

freshman and has finished in the top five in the 100 and 200 freestyle

events at league finals the last two years, qualified second in the 100

free (54.37) and fourth in the 200 free (1:59.47).

Freshman Jenna Murphy qualified fourth in the 200 IM (2:16.22) and sixth in the 100 backstroke (1:03.67). Lamont called the latter effort “a real

nice swim.”

Peirsol also posted the third-fastest time in the 200 IM (2:13.21).

Freshman Paige Lansing will represent Newport in championship finals of

the 500 free and the butterfly, after qualifying seventh (5:52.35) and

eighth (1:06.16), respectively. Her time in the fly was two seconds

faster than her previous prep best.

Freshman Mia Tajima (eighth in the 200 free) and freshman Peggy Beebe

(eighth in the 500 free) are other championship finalists for the

Sailors, who will try to pass Laguna Hills to finish second, behind

powerful Irvine.

“Irvine is just too deep, so our plan is to try to slip past Laguna

Hills,” said Lamont, whose Tars lost league dual meets to the Vaqueros

and Hawks. Our girls did what we asked them to do (Tuesday).”

The Sea View boys preliminaries are today, beginning at 2 p.m. at the

Sailors’ pool.