Streamlined News: Weekend Headline Roundup

PHOENIX, Arizona, May 20. THE high school swimming season came to a close last weekend with two national high school records broken at California’s north coast sectional championships in Concord. On Friday, Steven Stumph tied Brendan Hansen’s public school record of 53.67 in prelims of the event, then led two other swimmers under Patrick Fowler’s overall national record of 53.66 with a winning time of 53.39. The race was the fastest 100 breast in high school history, with Charlie Wiser also getting under the record with a 53.57 and Nick Silverthorn third with a 53.61. While Stumph and Wiser are off to Pac 12 colleges in the fall, Silverthorn will be back to the north coast meet next year as a senior and could challenge Stumph’s record.

Another record that fell Saturday in Concord was the girls’ 400 free relay. Carondelet’s foursome of Chelsea Chenault, Natalie Amberg, Maddie Murphy and Madison White posted a 3:20.42 in the event to become the fastest high school team in history. This is the third time the 400 free relay record has been broken this year. Germantown Academy did it first back in February, then JSerra did it just last week at the California southern section championships.

So let’s recap. A total of 18 national high school records were broken in the 2012-2013 high school season, a remarkable number. Eleven of those turned out to be the fastest swum in high school history, with the other seven being solely public school or independent school national records. You can see the full list of records broken in high school meets by going to swimmingworld.com and clicking on the records tab.

Further south in Castaic, California, was the USA Swimming open water nationals. We told you about the 10K victories by Christine Jennings in the women’s race and Alex Meyer in the men’s race on Friday’s Streamlined News. The 5K swim took place on Sunday, and it was another fight to the finish in the men’s race, which Andrew Gemmell won to secure a spot in the event for the world championships. Haley Anderson, who won silver in the Olympic 10K last summer, won the women’s 5K national title to put herself on the world champs roster. Becca Mann placed second to give her two open water swims at world championships. She could likely add some pool events to her schedule, depending on the outcome of the pool world championship trials in about five weeks.

Late Friday afternoon, the news broke that Michael Phelps would be making a comeback to the sport less than a year after calling it quits after the London Olympics. Peter Busch, our former Morning Swim Show host who is now a TV news anchor in Naples, Florida, first confirmed the news, and Phelps followed it up with a vaguely cryptic tweet that neither confirmed nor denied the rumors. We’ll see how this shakes out in the coming months in regards to an official statement from Phelps and his camp.

We had a couple of longstanding national age group records fall last weekend, starting with Matthew Limbacher in the long course 50 breaststroke in the 11-12 age group. Limbacher’s time of 31.63 broke a 21-year-old record set by Anthony Robinson in 1992, then Winn Aung swam a 1:01.21 in the 100 free, breaking the national age group record in the 10 and under age group that had belonged to current NBA player Kris Humphries since 1995. Aung took aim at Humphries’ 50 free national record of 27.71, but fell short with a 27.75. We’ll be keeping our eye on Aung through the summer to see if that 50 free record can fall before he turns 11.

More divers were added to the American roster for the FINA world championships on Sunday, with Kristian Ipsen winning his second event of the meet. Ipsen won his specialty, the 3-meter springboard, by a very comfortable margin over Samuel Dorman. Dorman was not selected for the world championship team because his final score did not meet USA Diving qualifying standards. Troy Dumais did not have the ideal meet, faltering on a dive in the 3-meter prelims then failing a dive in the finals. After not making the reverse 2-1.2 somersault with 1-1/2 twists, Dumais dropped out of the competition. Dumais was able to recover for the synchro 3-meter event today, winning with partner Michael Hixon. David Boudia, the reigning Olympic champion on the platform, will try to add world champion in that event after handily beating the competition in the final earlier today.

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