April 21, 2019
Santa Monica, CA
The Santa Monica College Men's Swimming team won its first Western State Conference Championship since 1990 this weekend. The team finished with 710.5 points, outlasting Ventura College who finished second with 621 points. Ventura took the lead (249-205) after the first day and diving events, but the Corsairs rallied to win the title.
The meet was highlighted by nine individual event wins. Four athletes won two events each, Matt Holt (500 yard Freestyle and 1650 yard Freestyle), Alonso Escobedo (200 yard Individual Medley and 400 yard Individual Medley), Edmund Teo (100 yard Breaststroke and 200 yard Breaststroke), and Alex Watson (1 Meter Diving and 3 Meter Diving) and Colin Casey had one event win in the 200 Butterfly. Santa Monica College won 3 relays, the 200 yard Medley Relay (Colin Casey, Edmund Teo, Oliver Kabilka, and Andrey Kondratyuk), 400 yard Medley Relay (Alonso Escobedo, Edmund Teo, Colin Casey, and Matt Holt), and the 800 yard Freestyle Relay (Alonso Escobedo, Brett Wong, Colin Casey, and Matt Holt)
The SMC Women's team finished 4th with 361 points, the highest finish since 2012. Santa Barbara City College won for the women followed by Cuesta and Bakersfield. Shayna Simmer won the 400 yard Individual Medley and Maggie Ewens won the 100 yard Backstroke.
SMC's Head Coach Brian Eskridge who was also selected Western State Conference Coach of the Year, expressed his satisfaction on his teams performance this season, "I am so happy for our athletes, coaches, athletic department, and everyone who has supported us through the years to get to this point. It has been a long road with a lot of great swimmers who have put in a ton of work to lay the foundation for this type of victory. Each year has gotten better and better and to be so close to winning last year was very bittersweet but it really fueled a lot of our swimmers this year. We knew from the beginning of the year we had a chance to do something special this year and everyone worked incredibly hard to make sure we came out on top. I am so proud of all 18 of our guys and all of our coaches because each and everyone contributed to this and it was a true team effort. I am also extremely proud of our 10 girls who put in as much, if not more work than the boys and even though we were a smaller team on the girls side they were still able to swim great and have our best finish in years. Having both teams working hard and pushing each other really took the whole program up a notch."
SMC will now head to the State Championships at De Anza College May 2nd-4th, 2019. Coach Eskridge assessed his team's chances at the State tournament; "Our swimmers have to qualify for State. We will know who definitely qualified on either Monday night or Tuesday morning as entries are due mid day Monday. Looking at the times from around the state it looks like on the guys side all 5 of our relays will qualify, in addition to 6 swimmers and 1 diver. On the women's side it looks like 4 relays will qualify and 2 swimmers and 1 diver. We will take our largest team since 2012 to the state championships.
