{"id":307471,"date":"2026-05-09T09:02:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T09:02:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/307471\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T09:02:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T09:02:09","slug":"granada-hills-sweeps-city-section-swimming-finals-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/307471\/","title":{"rendered":"Granada Hills sweeps City Section swimming finals again"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The pool dynasty continues at Granada Hills.<\/p>\n

The venue was different, but the result was the same as the Highlanders swept the boys\u2019 and girls\u2019 titles Friday in the City Section swim championships at East Los Angeles College.<\/p>\n

It was the girls\u2019 fourth title in a row (two short of the school-record six straight they won from 1995-2000) and their 10th overall. They finished with 458 points, comfortably ahead of runner-up Cleveland (226) and third-place Palisades (222).<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve won City every year since I was a freshman so I\u2019m pretty happy,\u201d said co-captain Elaina Brier, a senior committed to UC Santa Cruz. \u201cI got second in both of my individual events and won my relays (200-meter medley and 200-meter freestyle). We turned into such a dominant team and this is the strongest one.\u201d<\/p>\n

GALA\u2019s Jordyn Hale defended her crown in the 50 freestyle in 24.14 seconds (she won in 24 flat last year), followed by Brier (24.67). Hale also won the 100 freestyle in 53.06 after placing second last year to Iris Paek of LACES in 52.93. Brier was the runner-up this time in 54.24.<\/p>\n

Elise Kao of Venice repeated as 200 freestyle champion with a time of 1:54.98 and Granada Hills\u2019 Meygen Flores was second in 1:57.90. Kao (59.63) was second to Flores (58.21) in the 100 butterfly and Flores\u2019 teammate Sahasi Mahat was third.<\/p>\n

\"Venice <\/p>\n

Venice captain Elise Kao repeated as the girls\u2019 200-meter freestyle champion at the City Section Finals with a time of 1:54.98 on Friday.<\/p>\n

(Steve Galluzzo \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Granada Hills\u2019 Isabella San Jose won both the 200 individual medley (2:08.64) and 100 breaststroke (1:04.66), Mahat was second in the 100 backstroke and Abigail Sirichalermchai was second to San Jose in the 100 breaststroke. The Highlander girls took third, fourth and fifth in the 500 freestyle and closed strong with a winning 3:42.78 effort in the 400 freestyle relay.<\/p>\n

Not to be outdone, the boys racked up a whopping 512 points for their third straight title and fourth total (the first was in 2001).<\/p>\n

Palisades (275) placed second for the fourth year in a row, two points ahead of Cleveland.<\/p>\n

Princeton-bound captain Ryan Zheng capped a stellar career by winning the 200 and 500 freestyles for the third straight time and anchoring the Highlanders\u2019 winning 200 and 400 freestyle relays for the third year in a row.<\/p>\n

\"Granada <\/p>\n

Granada Hills\u2019 Ryan Zheng won the 200-meter freestyle for the third year in a row in 1:41.75 seconds at the City Section Finals on Friday.<\/p>\n

(Steve Galluzzo \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

\u201cFour golds for the third year in a row \u2014 it makes all the hard work worth it,\u201d Zheng said.<\/p>\n

Zheng swam the 200 in 1:41.75 seconds, bettering his 1:42.23 in last year\u2019s finals meet at Valley College, to beat teammates Kyle Lee (1:44.77) and Ryan Cha (1:46.71), who were second and third. Zheng topped last year\u2019s winning time in the 500 by nearly two seconds in 4:40.42.<\/p>\n

Granada Hills\u2019 depth was most evident in the 100 breaststroke, as Joel Shin (59.27), Ethan Gonzalez (1:00.97), Arya Shahriari (1:01.05) and Jairus Paita (1:03.07) swept the top four spots.<\/p>\n

The Highlanders lowered their times in the 200 freestyle relay (1:28.14) and 400 freestyle relay (3:12.61) and took first in the 200 medley relay by nearly three seconds but got disqualified when officials ruled Kenny Brier left early on the freestyle leg.<\/p>\n

\"Reseda\u2019s <\/p>\n

Reseda\u2019s Volodymyr Balaban won the 200-meter individual medley in 1:57.11 at the City Section Finals at East Los Angeles College on Friday.<\/p>\n

(Steve Galluzzo \/ For The Times)<\/p>\n

Brier (Elaina\u2019s sophomore brother) won the 50 freestyle (21.54) and 100 freestyle (48.53) while Reseda\u2019s Volodymyr Balaban took the 200 individual medley in 1:57.11, followed by Shin (1:58.64).<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery point matters every single year. … I\u2019ve never seen such unity in a team,\u201d said Granada Hills coach Joshua Cheng, the architect of the dynasty, who swam for Cleveland (graduating in 2015) and is now in his fifth year with the Highlanders. \u201cWe finished right where we belonged \u2014 at the top!\u201d<\/p>\n

As his team chanted, \u201cOne more!\u201d Cheng said: \u201cWhy stop there?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The pool dynasty continues at Granada Hills. The venue was different, but the result was the same as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[129260,129257,17149,129256,109934,9514,22164,129258,48,52,51,47,50,49,129259,1417,108788,17563,9018,129255,129261],"class_list":["post-307471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-breaststroke","tag-brier","tag-dynasty","tag-flat-last-year","tag-freestyle","tag-girl","tag-granada-hills","tag-highlanders","tag-la","tag-la-headlines","tag-la-news","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-headlines","tag-los-angeles-news","tag-meygen-flores","tag-point","tag-relay","tag-row","tag-second","tag-year-time","tag-zheng"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}