Warrior girls sixth at CIF swim meet but Dowden lowers school record

The CIF swim meet concluded with the Fallbrook High School girls placing sixth among Division I teams and Fallbrook senior Taylor Dowden lowering her own school record in the 100-yard breaststroke.

"Overall we did extremely well," said Fallbrook coach Sean Redmond.

The CIF meet consisted of swim preliminaries May 11 at Granite Hills High School, diving May 13 at Mesa College, and swim finals May 14 at Granite Hills. The swimmers with the top eight preliminary heat times in each event advanced to the championship finals with the next eight fastest swimmers qualifying for the consolation race. Position points were given for the top 16 finishes.

"We had a few girls that didn't make finals," Redmond said.

Torrey Pines, Carlsbad, San Marcos, Scripps Ranch, and El Camino had the top five points totals. "All of them had a lot more swimmers in finals than we had," Redmond said.

Both of Fallbrook's freestyle relay teams swam in the championship finals. The 400-yard freestyle relay team of junior Madalyn Johnson, senior Jordann Heimback, Dowden, and senior Ariana Young placed fourth with a time of 3:45.41. Dowden, Young, Heimback, and Johnson swam the 200-yard freestyle relay race in 1:42.17 to give Fallbrook fifth-place points.

Heimback qualified for the 100-yard butterfly championship race and finished sixth with a time of 59.65 seconds. Two Warriors were in the 50-yard freestyle championship final, a dash in which Dowden placed seventh with a time of 25.54 seconds and Johnson eighth with a time of 25.79 seconds.

Dowden was relegated to the consolation final in the 100-

yard breaststroke even though she set a school record in her preliminary race. She swam her preliminary heat in 1:08.74, which reduced the school record from the 1:09.31 she swam at the league meet.

The eighth-place preliminaries time was 1:08.28. Last year, a time of 1:11.76 earned eighth place in the preliminaries. "It was a big time drop from last year," Redmond said.

Dowden, who did not compete in the breaststroke at the 2015 CIF meet, won this year's consolation race with a time of 1:09.36 to earn ninth place.

Heimback swam the 200-yard freestyle consolation race in 1:59.91 for 11th place. Young was 12th in the 100-yard backstroke at 1:02.76 and 13th in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 56.00 seconds.

Fallbrook was third among Division I schools at the 2015 CIF meet. The Warriors lost one 2015 senior and two military dependents from last year's team.

In addition to the three seniors who placed in this year's CIF finals, Redmond's twelfth-graders also include Mackenzie Montgomery, Jazmin Patterson, Sierra Peterson, and Korin Prefontaine.

"I've got a lot of work to do between now and next year," said Redmond.