BY JON R. LAFOLLETTE | STAFF WRITER
PHARR — Sharyland High swim coach Tina Jensen was one of the last members of the Rattlers swim team to enter the pool Friday during the District 32-5A Swim and Dive Championships at the Pharr Aquatics Center Natatorium. Jensen was tossed into the deep end by a gang of swimmers as a means of commemorating the team’s first place performance.
“I just ask them to avoid the lane ropes,” Jensen said.
The Rattlers won both the overall and boys competition with a score of 325.5 points and 198.5 points, respectively. The girls team placed second with a total of 127 points. In all, 21 swimmers and divers qualified for regional competition in Corpus Christi on Feb. 6.
Sharyland senior Brett Myska won Male Athlete of the Meet honors for his perfect day in the pool. The senior placed first in the 50-yard freestyle with a time of 23.53 seconds before taking gold again in the 100 fly (58.22), edging Roma’s Ahren Trevino by 1.71 seconds.
“I could see (Trevino) in the water,” Myska said. “I had to make sure I got ahead of him. I just focused on the end.”
Myska, who will travel to regionals for a fourth time, also placed first in the 200 medley relay alongside teammates Marco Rivera, Javier Moreno and Carlos Graybill.
Graybill, a senior, placed second in the 100 backstroke (1:00.91), and finished first in the 100 freestyle, an event he says he hasn’t participated in “since freshman year.”
“I had been feeling better about my 100,” Graybill said. “I’ve been doing the 200 instead, but after the first half I get tired. So I told (coach) to put me in the 100.”
The Sharyland boys flexed their muscle a final time during the 400 freestyle relay, winning with a time of 3:36.84, nearly 12 seconds better than the second-place PSJA Southwest Javelinas.
“I think they did awesome,” Jensen said. “I couldn’t ask for any more from them.”
Just as the boys team flourished for Sharyland, so too did the Lady Gladiators of Roma, who took first place in the girls competition with a score of 159. The Roma girls’ were led in part by the effort of Jocelyn Martinez, who took home the award for Female Athlete of the Meet.
Martinez was unquestionably the best individual swimmer throughout the day. The junior glided through the pool en route to a gold-medal finish in the 100 freestlye with a time of 54.87 before finishing first in the 200 freestyle in 2:00.7 – more than 15 seconds better than the runner-up.
Martinez’s most impressive moment occurred in the 400 freestyle relay, in which she served as Roma’s anchor. Facing a five-second deficit to Sharyland’s Andrea Valdez as she entered the water for the race’s final 100 yards, Martinez tore through the pool with mechanical ruthlessness, steadily reeling Valdez in before pulling away in the final 25 yards to hand Roma the win with a time of 4:04.24, 1.26 seconds better than Sharyland.
“It was really hard,” Martinez said. “At 50 (yards), I saw I was catching up to (Valdez). I told myself, ‘Let’s just do it.”
Martinez nursed an ailing right shoulder with ice between swims.
“It’s just muscle tenderness,” Roma swim coach Calvin Snyder said. “We’ve been icing it and doing some therapy on it. It’s nothing internal, she just put out today.”