Thursday, December 25, 2008

Paola Power












Remarkable 13 year-old Paola Hernadez added another tremendous performance to her resume when she swam recently at the SMS Winter Invitational [Belmont Pool, Long Beach]. In the the 100 yard Backstroke she had qualified 73rd out of 112 contestants (some as old as 23) with a time of 1:02.85.

That's a pretty good time by itself - good enough to beat the CIF Consideration (1:10.50) and Qualification (1:07.20) times from last spring by wide margins. St. Joe's Erica Branson won the LPAL last year with a 1:02.71 and posted the League record mark of 1:00.09 in 2007. A 1:02.85 time would also have been good enough to finish second in the LPAL boys race - behind Morro Bay's Trent Popovich (59.74), but ahead of Conquistador Greg Herrera (1:03.67).

Hernandez, was not done, however. She finished 25th overall - just missing the finals, by 0.03 seconds, while swimming a blistering 59.93 . Yup, the LVMS student put up an event time better than any female swimmer in the history of the Los Padres League meet. Can't wait to see what she'll do when she's finally old enough to compete in one. - el stato

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