Lancer Boys and Girls Swim to Victory

The holiday break kept many Livingston High School swimmers out of the pool for much of the last 10 days, but the layoff wasn't enough to cost them a victory on Wednesday.

The Lancer girls easily defeated Newark Academy 63-31, while the boys gritted one out. A clutch performance in the final event - 400-meter freestyle relay - enabled them hold on for a 48-46 victory at the West Essex YMCA.

"It was a gutsy performance," said coach Scott Schroeder. "We put a couple of guys in the relay that don't normally perform there - gave them the chance to compete at a high level - and they held strong."

Livingston lead 45-39 heading into the final event due in part to a trio of excellent individual times. Illya Vasilyev won the 100-meter butterfly in 58.45 seconds; Eefine Chang placed first with a time of 52.75 seconds in the 100-meter freestyle; and Stanley Chu out swam the field with a time of 1:08.51 in the 100-meter breaststroke.

"Anytime you have a break the kids are going to have to get back into the swing of  things," explained Schroeder. "We had a nice practice the last couple of days and expected they were going to be down a little bit time wise, but for the most part they were faster than we expected."

Despite the individual performances, Schroeder had a different take on the victory.

"This was a collective effort," he said. "We were down one key swimmer today, and coming into this season loosing nine swimmers from last year - having them come together today and swim like that - was a nice team effort."

The Lancer girls' score might seem like it was a business-as-usual day, but according to head coach Gina Santianna it was a bit deceiving.

"We were missing three keys girls today so we had to switch things up a bit," Santianna explained. "We're a little bit deeper this year than we've been so we thought that we might be able to do alright today."

Alright they did from the get-go. The quartet of Jessica Chu, Paige Stetson, Lauren Deltugo and Elika Solari got the Lancer girls off to a fast start in the first event - 200-meter medley relay - winning in 2:06.70.

"We haven't really had practice for 10 days," said Santianna. "With a lot of them not having been in the water for so long and being just a second off their times, I can't complain."

Other notable individual performances included Nancy Yang winning the 200-meter medley in 2:27.31, and Jessica Chu swimming the 100-meter backstroke in 1:13.82 for a victory.

With the victories the Lancer boys improve to 6-1, while the girls now move to 4-2.