Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Clovis High sophomore Claire Pella grabs a breath as she competes in the 100 breaststroke on Saturday in the finals of the Lubbock Invitational. The Lady Wildcats finished fourth in a field of 22 teams.
LUBBOCK – Clovis High's girls finished fourth in a field of 22 teams while the boys were ninth out of 24 over the weekend in the Lubbock Invitational swim meet.
CHS co-coach Vincent de Maio said on Monday that the boys had some disqualifications trying to get to events on time in the large and, at times, unwieldy meet.
"The meet was huge, and a lot was going on," de Maio said. "These things happen, and it was a learning process for us."
Lubbock High swept both team titles, beating out Lubbock Coronado 586-471 for the boys and 692-521 ½ for the girls. Klein (Texas) was third for the girls with 453 while the Lady Wildcats followed at 353.
El Paso Eastwood claimed third place for the boys at 462. The Wildcats came in with 146 ½ points.
"We have about everybody qualified (for state) that we can," de Maio said. "We've really turned about 100 percent of our attention to training (for district and state competition in February)."
Several Clovis swimmers were coming off high-level competition the week before in the Core Classic at Garland, Texas, and it took a bit of a toll.
"Friday (in the preliminaries) was chaos, but the kids really got up and swam better in the finals across the board," de Maio said.
The top individual finishes for Clovis came in the 100-yard individual medley, where senior Porter Kidd placed second for the boys in 55.13 seconds and junior Julia Spears was third for the girls in 1 minute, 6.49 seconds. Both were coming off the meet at Garland.
"Porter was tired, but last week was a really big week for him," de Maio said.
The Lady Cats finished fourth in the 200 medley relay (2:01.19) with junior Brynn Longley and Lilyan Russell, Spears and sophomore Claire Pella. They were barely edged out by Lubbock High (2:01.18).
"They got touched out for third by a fingernail," de Maio said.
CHS finishes the 2023 portion of its schedule on Saturday in the Carlsbad Invitational. The Cats and Lady Cats resume their schedule Jan. 5-6 in an invitational at Andrews, Texas.
