The swimming season came to a close for Gilroy and Christopher at the CCS prelims at the Santa Clara International Swim Center on May 12.
Christopher sent two prelim teams as well as four individual swimmers between the girls and the boys.
Gilroy, meanwhile, had two events with a relay team and an individual swimmer.
This closes out the season for the teams, including for the Christopher girls team that swept through the league season and smashed through the league finals.
The 200y Medley Relay team of Maria Higgenbotham, Brianna Mertz, Nicole Critzer and Sierra Ceballos took 39th overall with a time of 2:00.98.
The 200y freestyle relay of Ceballos, Mertz, Higgenbotham and Malaya Santos took 30th with a time of 1:46.17.
It was a tough event for the local teams. By comparison, the prelim winning time turned in by Palo Alto was a 1:35.67. The top 10 placers in the prelims all went sub 1:40.
Santos also had two individual events, turning in a strong effort in the 200y free.
Santos shaved more than a second off her seed time with a time of 2:00.84.
She followed that with a solid effort in the 500y free, taking 44th with a time of 5:26.23. She came out fast with a first lap of 28.70 before averaging just under 33 seconds per lap.
Christopher had two other individual swimmers, starting with Nicole Critzer taking 42nd overall in the 100y butterfly.
Critzer was in a tightly packed cluster of swimmers where the difference between 28th and 45th was less than a second.
Critzer swam a time of 1:00.70. She was 0.7 seconds back of 28th from Evergreen Valley’s Felita Zhang who swam a 1:00.00.
The cutoff for the second-day qualifiers was a 58.52.
Still, Crtizer shaved a full second off her time in the prelims from her seed time.
Finally on the girls side, Higgenbotham swam a 55.80 in the 100y free where she was 0.8 seconds off of 34th place as 16 swimmers were within a second of each other.
On the boys side, Chris Critzer was roughly a second off of qualifying for the consolation finals when he took 30th in the 100y free with a time of 48.79.
Leland’s Thomas Yannick took 16th in the prelims with a time of 47.84 representing the final qualifier.
Still Critzer shaved 0.7 seconds off his seed time and was within 0.48 seconds off of 19th.
Gilroy
Gilroy swam two events at the CCS prelims, including one relay and an individual event.
The 200y free relay team of Harding Ashley, Ellie Pickford, Katelyn Brolin and Rachel Carnell who took 32nd with a time of 1:46.38.
Ashley closed out her day with a 25.94 in the 50 free, finishing within 0.84 seconds of the 28th place finisher.
