Yasmine Ware, a junior at Kauai High School, helped lead her team to a sixth place finish at the OC16 Hawaii High School Athletic Association Swimming and Diving championships over the weekend at the Kamehameha Schools-Big Island. Dan Britzmann, an
Yasmine Ware, a junior at Kauai High School, helped lead her team to a sixth place finish at the OC16 Hawaii High School Athletic Association Swimming and Diving championships over the weekend at the Kamehameha Schools-Big Island.
Dan Britzmann, an official with the Kauai Interscholastic Federation, was selected to serve as the official meet starter, “enjoying a front row seat on another incredibly fast swim meet” where seven state records were set.
Ware was beat out of the top spot in two of her events, the girls 50 yard freestyle and the girls 100 yard backstroke.
In both events, Ware was beat out by a fraction of a second, touching the wall on a swim of 23.55 seconds in the 50 freestyle, bettering her preliminary swim of 24.34.
“Yasmine and Kate Machorek both swam well and made finals in both individual events,” Britzmann said in an email. “Yasmine narrowly missed being a double-winner, just getting out-touched in both her 50 free and 100 back.” The effort came up short as Aja o Grande, a senior at Iolani School, beat out the junior by .16 second in the finals, touching at 23.31.
In the girls 100 backstroke, Ware again came up short, beat out of the top spot by a scant .03 seconds by Lia Foster, a freshman out of Punahou School, who touched at 57.20.
Ware’s 57.23 swim in the finals was better than her preliminary swim where she marked 58.25, a swim quicker than Foster’s 59.23.
Machorek, a junior at Kauai High School, was relegated to fourth place in the 200 freestyle, touching at 1 minute, 54.32 seconds, but being edged out of third place by Rebecca Walton, a junior at the Mid-Pacific Institute, by .28 seconds.
Walton went on to claim top honors in the 500 freestyle, Machorek settling in fourth on a 5:07.61 swim, an improvement of nearly 10 seconds over her preliminary swim. Walton’s top swim stopped the clocks at 4:59.68.
Britzmann said Maluhia Stark-Kinimaka of Kapaa High School raced her way into the finals of the 50 freestyle with Yasmine, setting a personal best of 25.28, a solid seventh-place finish following her improvement of 25.54 in the preliminaries.
Britzmann said other KIF standouts included Ava Wagner of Kauai High School making first alternate ninth place in the 100 breaststroke, and Kapaa’s Bryson Baligad taking nearly a half second off his 50 freestyle to make second alternate 10th in a competitive men’s field.
The Kauai High School girls relay teams of Ware, Machorek, Wagner and Tambrina Fairbanks, finished with a pair of fifth-place finishes in the 200 freestyle relay and the 200 medley relay.
Other KIF swimmers making the trip to the Big Island include Tyler Elwin, Riley Young, Bradley Fujiuchi, Hikari Oberman for Kauai High School. Kayla Ishida went for Waimea High School, James Papa, Kaikane Anderson, Kyle Riddle and Sam Goldberg traveled for the Island School Voyagers along with Kalena Wong, Sterling Bird, Pualei Pratt and Carolyn Price.
