Oct. 12, 2007

Results

By Matias Saari
msaari@newsminer.com
Published October 13, 2007

Mariya Pavlovskaya had a sinus headache and earache from the red-eye flight to Los Angeles early Friday morning. The 17-year-old Russian swimmer for the Alaska Nanooks also was famished, cold and tired upon arriving at the Pacific Coast Swim Conference Pentathlon/Relay Invitational in Riverside, Calif.

"I thought I might have to scratch her and she said `I'll tough it out,'" Nanooks coach Scott Lemley said. "And then she just about won the thing."

In her first official race for the Nanooks, Pavlovskaya finished second among 29 swimmers in the long medley pentathlon, a unique event that featured 100 yards of the four major strokes plus a 200 individual medley. Pavlovskaya recorded a time of 6 minutes, 35.33 seconds, slower only than Haley Wilson of NCAA Division I Pepperdine University.

"She really showed her mettle. A lot of coaches came up to me and said `Where did you find this girl?'" Lemley said of his freshman from Moscow. "She was the youngest person at the meet and probably the most talented."

Lemley called the conditions for his swimmers "brutal" because of the travel from Fairbanks to Anchorage to Seattle to L.A.

"I don't know if we're going to take this red-eye much more, especially with such a short amount of time between the flight and competition. When we got in the pool (Friday) afternoon, some of them had been up for 40 hours," Lemley said. "They were exhausted, they were tired, they were hungry. It was supposed to be a fun meet and they didn't look like they were having too much fun."

Despite those challenges, several other Nanooks held their own in a format in which the team has never competed.

Junior Samantha Zinsli placed 12th of 49 swimmers in the freestyle pentathlon (comprised of the 25, 50, 100, 200 and 500 freestyle races) in 15:31.11. Her specialty is the distance freestyle events.

Sophomore Kelly Becker, who aims for a Division II national championship in the 200 butterfly, also decided to enter the freestyle pentathlon, finishing 20th in 15:50.96.

Freshman Kinsey Laine was 26th and sophomore Jacqueline van Driessche, still building her fitness after a summer of working in Seward, took 28th in the freestyle pentathlon.

One notable absence was freshman Sarah Rockwell, who with Lemley's approval stayed in the Los Angeles area to visit her husband.

"I think she would have done very well," Lemley said. "I suspect she would have won the freestyle pentathlon."

Rockwell's absence means the unveiling of the Nanooks' national championship-caliber medley relay team will be delayed at least one week. The relay portion of the meet is today, and Zinsli or senior Karin Wagner of North Pole will instead anchor the individual medley teams that include van Driessche, Becker and Pavlovskaya.