Mesa boys’ swimming enjoying a big season

Cody and Dustin Serrano attended Wednesday’s Battle for the Bell swim meet at Estancia, rooting on their alma mater of Costa Mesa.

The Serrano twins now coach water polo at Mesa. In that sport in the Orange Coast League, Laguna Beach has always been the team to beat. That’s also been true in swimming, but this year the Costa Mesa boys have a chance to do something that hasn’t been done since the Serranos themselves were juniors in high school.

The Mustangs boys went 5-0 in league and will be aiming for their first league title since 2008 next week, when Costa Mesa plays host to the Orange Coast League finals. Preliminaries are on Tuesday, with the finals on Thursday. Laguna Beach has won eight straight boys’ swimming league titles.

“Going into my senior year, I’ve always been striving to have a league title,” Costa Mesa senior Jacob Petersen said. “So far, throughout the years, we haven’t had one for swimming or water polo. Going into this year, I really wanted to pick it up. I’ve been pushing people to work super-hard every day, because it doesn’t take two to win a whole meet. You have to have the whole team on the same schedule, or else you’re only going to get a certain amount of points.”

Petersen, Misael Andino and Nick Ly are key senior swimmers for Costa Mesa. Junior Augie Cunningham also plays a big role, as does freshman Aidan Blair, in Coach Tim Postiff’s first year back with the team.

The Mesa boys beat Laguna Beach, 97-73, in the teams’ league dual meet this season. It snapped the Breakers’ long league dual meet win streak.

“It was exciting for a little bit, but you kind of knew that you had to start working even harder,” Petersen said. “Laguna’s known to have a good taper, they always have. I feel like they’re going to be pushing themselves a lot faster during league finals. They’re definitely going to be a good competitor.”

Blair is a talented club swimmer who won the 100-yard butterfly at the Chino Hills Invitational last weekend in 52.89 seconds, which is close to the CIF Southern Section Division 2 automatic cut of 52.50.

The Mesa 200 free relay team is also close to a Division 2 auto cut with a season-best of 1:29.89; the time to beat is 1:29.50. And, the school record in the event is also within reach. It’s a 1:29.11, set by Kyle Thorsness, James Fowler, Evan Spencer and Adam Douglas in 2005. Thorsness was the Mesa swimming coach the last two years.

League finals would be a great time for the Mustangs to get that auto cut and also possibly win a league title.

“We’ve been practicing pretty hard lately,” Ly said. “It’s really going to show in our taper, how much we’ve grown and how fast we’ve gotten.”

On the girls’ side, Laguna Beach looks to win its 10^th straight Orange Coast League swimming title. Kasey Karkoska, who has an Orange County-best time of 55.23 in the girls’ butterfly this season, leads the Breakers. Karkoska’s time of 55.66 in the backstroke is also second in the county.

Los Amigos boys’ swim wins league

Most leagues hold their swimming finals next week, but the Garden Grove League got an early start by holding its league finals on Thursday.

Los Amigos’ boys won the league title, their first since 2009, after edging La Quinta at Garden Grove High.

Loc Tran starred for the Lobos. Tran won the 100 butterfly in 56.35 seconds, and the 50 free in 23.94. He was also on two winning relays.

Team USA men fall to Australia

The United States men’s senior national water polo team lost to host Australia, 12-8, in a FINA Intercontinental Tournament game Friday in Gold Coast, Australia.

Huntington Beach High graduate Alex Wolf (UCLA) made four saves in goal for Team USA. The other local player on the team is Nolan McConnell (Laguna Beach High/Long Beach State).

Team USA suffered its first loss of the tournament. The team had defeated Japan (10-8), Kazakhstan (15-10) and China (18-6) to open the tournament.

The Americans closed out preliminary play late Friday night against New Zealand.

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