Eighteen pool records fell during the Sedona Swordfish club swimming team’s annual summer swim meet, the Sedona Summer Splash, on Saturday and Sunday, June 16 and 17, at the Sedona Community Pool.

Three of those records belonged to current or very recent Swordfish members. The 15 Swordfish swimmers who participated combined for fourth out of six teams in the combined team standings with 478 points.

“I was super happy, just with how our kids swam and how the meet was run overall. I think it was a really positive experience overall for the teams that came down,” Swordfish head coach Daniel Morse said. “A good amount of our kids are pretty new to the sport, and I saw a lot of the kids raced really well, they raced hard, they competed, and then they were all cheering for each other, supporting each other, which is really the environment and culture we want to create with our team.”

The weather was stark in contrast from the first day to the next. Heavy showers poured in Sedona and throughout the Verde Valley in the late morning and early afternoon Saturday. However, it did not put a hamper the competition.

With 90 points, 15-year-old Andrew Tate was the top point scorer in the combined individual rankings for boys and girls aged 15 to 18. Tate was followed closely by Emma Warner of the Cottonwood Clippers, who was the girls high-point winner with 88 points. Morse said Warner, a Mingus Union High School junior this year, always switches from Sedona to Cottonwood in the summer.

Sedona landed two other swimmers in the top 10 of the combined 15 to 18 standings: Brother-sister duo of Zach [fourth, 57 points] and Dezra Dana [sixth, 43 points]. Zach Dana was second in boys and Dezra Dana was third in girls. Fourteen-year-old Cody Brefeld was third in the 13-14 boys points standings.

“It’s just hard work, that’s kind of the way it is for these guys. They know how to race, they know how to compete, they’re super competitive,” Morse said. “In swimming, the way it works is if you work hard, you’re going to get faster, and they’ve been putting the work in.”

The Swordfish racked up 39 top-three finishes. Eighteen pool records fell as well.

Ten-year-old Lincoln Jones of the Needles Sandsharks broke five. Jones snapped the 200-yard individual medley record for his age group by about 17 seconds. He also broke the 100-yard freestyle, 50-yard backstroke, 50-yard freestyle and 100-yard IM records.

Tate broked the pool record in the 200-yard breaststroke with a 2:33.77, just under a second faster than the previous one set by the Clippers’ Fletch Fangman in 2017. Warner broke two records, in the 50-yard breaststroke [34.06] by just over two seconds, set by teammate Rylie Burke in 2016. Warner also broke the four-year-old 100-yard breaststroke record [1:14.17].

The largest margin by which a record was broken came in the 9-10 girls division. Bullhead City’s Samarah Dominguez broke the 100 IM record by almost 31 seconds [56.54].

The meet served as a training tool for the older, more experienced Swordfish, while for the younger and more novice swimmers it was an introduction to competition.