Storm medley relay breaks state meet record for a second time

The Squalicum 200 medley relay really wasn’t concerned about the competition on Saturday, Nov. 14, at the Class 2A Girls’ Swimming Championships at the King County Aquatic Center.

It already had turned in a time nearly 2 1/2 seconds faster than its nearest competitor during the preliminaries on Friday, Nov. 13. No, Squalicum was more concerned with itself — or at least the performance it turned in 24 hours earlier.

The Storm set a state meet record in posting the top qualifying time of the state preliminaries, and Serena Allendorfer, Yanran Le, Olivia Nielsen and Tiana Varang desperately wanted to go even faster.

Mission accomplished, as the Storm won the title in the event with a new record time of 1 minute, 48.52 seconds, beating their old record by more than a second. Liberty finished second in 1:51.35.

“Those girls were fast,” Squalicum coach Randy Elsner said. “I saw them flying off the blocks and making some tremendous turns. I got to present the medals afterward, and it was a lot of fun.”

A lot of fun for the swimmers, too, who enjoyed seeing the proud smile on their coach’s face, Le said.

“We knew coming in we could come back and go even faster, and that was definitely our goal,” Le said. “We knew we had a chance.”

And by swimming a near perfect race, that’s exactly what they did.

“Serena gave us a big lead, and we knew each of us was responsible for expanding it,” Le said. “Livy did a good job of expanding it even more, and Tiana brought it home strong.”

This story was originally published November 14, 2015 at 6:18 PM with the headline "Storm medley relay breaks state meet record for a second time."