ROY HESS | Staff Writer
The biggest swimming meet of the school year in South Texas takes place Friday and Saturday at Brownsville’s Margaret M. Clark Aquatic Center.
The Pre-Regional Showcase begins at 11:30 a.m. Friday. There will be prelims in swimming and diving the first day. The finals are scheduled Saturday with the diving to start at 9 a.m. and the swimming to follow at 10 a.m.
The meet is attracting a multitude of teams from the Rio Grande Valley, Laredo and Corpus Christi.
“(There are) 804 swimmers, 42 teams — that’s the most ever,” said Monica Rosales, Clark Aquatic Center administrator and meet director. “This will be a real good indicator of which teams should do well at the Region VIII-6A Meet (on Feb. 3 at the Clark Aquatic Center).
“There’s a little more pressure to make it to the finals in this meet,” Rosales added. “I think coaches are putting their best relays together (to see how they measure up with the competition). It should be very interesting.”
The Clark Center is one of the few aquatic facilities in South Texas that can accommodate such numbers of swimmers and divers for a high school meet.
The top 16 qualifiers in each swimming event advance to Saturday’s competition with eight making it to the championship finals and the other eight swimming in the consolation finals.
The primary objective for coaches at a big meet like this one becomes fairly obvious.
“Our goal is to try to get as many kids as possible into the finals on Saturday,” Los Fresnos coach Albino Cisneros said.
Added Rivera coach Ryan Shea, “We’ve just been focusing on our swimmers making it to the finals.”
There’s strategy involved for the coaches as well considering the high level of competition.
“We are in a fortunate position to use a bit of strategy with the depth we have on our team this year,” Hanna coach Sam Perez said. “We have room to explore options with relays and individual events, so it makes for an exciting and competitive meet.
“The wild card is figuring out in which events other coaches will swim their top swimmers,” Perez added. “So we are going in hopeful and watchful. (We’re) studying times and trends.”
The defending team champions are the McAllen Memorial girls and Tuloso-Midway boys.
Last year, the Memorial girls won with 290 points followed by Laredo Alexander with 196 and Los Fresnos with 186. The T-M boys won with 288 points ahead of McAllen High with 207 and Sharyland High with 167.
Roy Hess covers sports for The Brownsville Herald. You can reach him via email at [email protected]. On Twitter he’s @HessRgehess