Color It Bronze--Two 3rd Place State Medal School Records for Men's Swim Petersen

Michael Petersen established himself as the best breaststroke swimmer in Pasadena City College's storied history in men's swimming as he broke two school records at the 3C2A State Championship meet held at Santa Rosa Junior College May 1-3.

Petersen twice took third place medals in both the 100 and 200-yard breaststroke events and established new Lancers records in the process. Along with his 14th place in the 50 freestyle, the sophomore scored 35 team points allowing PCC to place 23rd out of 32 scoring teams at the meet. 

On Day 2's 100 breaststroke final, Petersen broke his own school record and swam a mark of 55.74 seconds for the bronze. He had earlier snapped Keisuke Yagi's 2008 school record of 56.85 at the South Coast Conference Championships when he recorded a 56.43 to win the SCC title in that event. His new PCC standard happened in the same race that state champion and American River's Cayden Pitzer demolished the meet record in 52.98. Petersen was just .14 behind second-place Jared Ladinez of Riverside. 

On Saturday's final day, Petersen swam a blistering 2:02.35 for the fastest mark by a SoCal swimmer this year as he shattered Yagi's 2007 previous school record by 1.51 seconds (2:03.86). Both from the North Region, Pitzer won the gold and Sierra's Michael Hansen the silver. 

Petersen recorded the highest state finish by a Lancer since Michael Humphrey placed third in the 400 individual medley at the 2019 meet. His performance punctuated as being the first post-pandemic high finish by a Lancers swimmer and done so after practing/participating his two seasons at an off-campus location--Polytechnic School's pool.  

"In other years, Michael could have been accepting a state first place medal, but the level of quality swimmers in the state right now is super high," said PCC head coach Terry Stoddard. "He put himself in pretty good company when it comes to all-time great swimmers here. The breaststroke has been considered the hardest stroke to perform and he did it masterfully.

"He also put up these great times despite the hurdle of having to rush to off-campus, early morning practices at a local high school pool. Many of our great swimmers got to participate at our PCC Aquatic Center, a place where we held state meets and large invitationals in past years. Our hope is that future PCC swimmers will finally get to swim on campus again when the college repairs and upgrades our facility."

Since becoming head coach at PCC at the start of the 21st century, Stoddard has coached his swimmers to 11 school records, guiding nine state individual event champions, nine SCC Swimmers of the Year, and 65 conference event titles.