Yasmine Ware, 11, of Mokihana Aquatics upset two 12-year-olds en route to earning a gold medal in the Girls 11-12 50 Yard Backstroke event, Sunday at the state Short Course Championships on O‘ahu. In addition to the gold medal, Ware
Yasmine Ware, 11, of Mokihana Aquatics upset two 12-year-olds en route to earning a gold medal in the Girls 11-12 50 Yard Backstroke event, Sunday at the state Short Course Championships on O‘ahu.
In addition to the gold medal, Ware finished the meet with two third place finishes, four fourth place finishes and a fifth place finish in 13 events she competed in over the weekend.
Mokihana Aquatics coach Orlando “O” Anaya was ecstatic over the 11-year-old’s victory.
“She went into the event ranked third,” Anaya said. “Following the preliminaries, she was still in third, but the No. 1 and 2 seeds beating her by only fractions of a second.”
Anaya said Ware’s victory in that event can be attributed to her “near-perfect” start and a “near-perfect” turn.
“While most swimmers hit the surface stroking at about the 5- or 6-meter mark, Yasmine was under until a little past the halfway mark,” Anaya said. “She pops up stroking almost a body’s length ahead of the two top seeds.”
But the top seeds were not to be deterred as Anaya said they pulled to within a half body’s length at the turn that Ware executed “near perfect” to extend her lead to a body’s length over the top seeds.
In the final 20 yards, the top swimmer in the field made a final attempt at catching the Kaua‘i swimmer and with about five yards remaining in the race, it looked like he was going to catch her.
“But Yasmine would have no part of that, and with a final lunge pulled off one of the upset swims at the state championships over the past four days,” Anaya said. “I actually ran around in a circle, not knowing what has just happened.”
That swim earned Ware one of four ZONE times she piled up at the state meet, while improving her previous swim 1.27 seconds, stopping the clock at 28.99Y.
In one of her third place finishes, Ware posted a 2.33 improvement with a ZONE qualifying performance of 1:05.47Y in the preliminaries of the Girls 11-12 100 Back.
Her other third finish came in the preliminaries of the Girls 11-12 50 Back where she stopped the clock at 30.31Y.
Her fourth place finishes came in the finals of the 11-12 100 Back where she trimmed 2.24 off her time with a 1:05.47Y swim, the preliminaries and finals of the 11-12 100 Individual Medley (1:07.95Y, an improvement of 1.45) and the finals of the 11-12 50 Free (26.53Y) where she posted a 0.12 improvement over her previous swim.
Ware finished with improvements in eight of the 13 events she swam.
Kaitlin Santos, 13, the other Mokihana Aquatics swimmer, finished the four-day meet with improvements in two of the four events she swam in, her greatest improvement coming in the Girls 13-14 100 Back where she trimmed 2.03 off her previous swim by stopping the clock at 1:09.10Y. That earned her a 16th place finish in the field, her best showing. She came home with three QUAL times and an HIAA time.
Anaya said following Ware’s first finish in the 50 Backstroke, Olympian Dr. Chris Woo made a beeline to the awards podium to be the first one to congratulate her, saying, “I know this girl. I remember when she was this high,” holding the palm of his hand at his waist.
“Getting that congratulatory handshake from an Olympian was a Kodak moment,” Anaya said.
