Kaiser’s success this season isn’t limited to dry land.
The Cougars swept the OIA swimming and diving championships at Central Oahu Regional Park on Saturday, with the girls beating Kapolei by a whopping 221 points and the boys outscoring Mililani by 35.
Kaiser’s girls won for the fifth straight year, but the boys broke Mililani’s string of seven straight titles, capped by a surprising performance in the last event of the meet.
"The boys is a big surprise," Kaiser girls coach Reinhardt Lai Hipp said. "A lot of them placed higher than they were ranked, moving from sixth to like third or fourth. I guess this year we lucked out with the numbers and stuff."
The Cougars trailed Mililani and Kalani halfway through the 400-free relay, but overtook the leaders on the third leg and widened it on the final one. It was Kaiser’s only victory of the meet on the boys side.
Kaiser’s girls had more than their share of winners, with Lara Yasumi taking the 200 free and Corrine Shigeta winning the 100 free before breaking Brittany Beauchan’s OIA record from 2004 in the 100 breast. Shigeta also teamed with Yasumi, Taylor Bogdahn and Moon Jung Kim to break their own OIA record from last year in the 200 medley relay. Shigeta swam the anchor leg on Kaiser’s other relay win, teaming with Kim, Zoey Fox and Kyla Fox for a victory in the 400 free relay.
Aimee Iwamoto of Moanalua earned victories in the 200 IM and 50 free just two events later, and Paris James of Kalani won the 500 free and 100 fly. Castle’s Nikki Imanaka led off the final day with a 448.40 in the 1-meter dive, breaking Luchie Arnegard’s record of 423.55 from 1992.
The runner-up finish for Mililani’s boys put a damper on the evening for Trojans ace Kevin Frifeldt. The senior broke his own record in the 100 fly with a 49.48 time and entered the water as the anchor in the 200 free relay in second place, but overtook Campbell’s Makoa Alvarez to bring his team the win by more than two seconds.
"It was a team thing and I knew it was going to be pretty close," Frifeldt said. "When I saw my teammates doing really well, putting up fast times, I knew we had a shot and I just swam as fast as I could."
Frifeldt’s record came with Alvarez next to him, but the Campbell junior made up for it in the 100 backstroke with Frifeldt out of the pool. Alvarez broke former Pearl City swimmer Daren Choi’s 2009 record of 52.54 in the preliminaries on Friday night and lowered it with a 51.42 on Saturday. He made it look easy on Saturday, beating second-place Daniel Yuen-Schat by more than seven seconds, but he says he got some special inspiration.
"It was tough, especially underwater after the last turn," Alvarez said. "My uncle (Jon Haneberg) just passed away a couple of days ago, so I thought of him and tried to push it even more."
Moanalua sophomore Christian Nishimura had the only other record of the meet, passing Kalani senior Anson Tam during the third leg and holding on to swim a 1:56.27 and break Jacob Urbano’s 1:57.10 from 2012.
Nishimura was one of 11 freshmen or sophomores to win individual events. Juniors and seniors took only five, so there will probably be more records to fall in the near future.
Nishimura had never eclipsed Urbano’s mark before, and he covered the distance 10 seconds faster than he did in the preliminaries.
"Today I got out of bed and I was like, ‘I am going to break a record today,’ " Nishimura said. "Right when I got up I was thinking about that. Thinking about that record up there just gave me the urge to swim faster."
