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Santa Margarita’s record-setting time in the girls 400-yard freestyle relay last week looked like a warm-up on Friday.
The Eagles clocked a much faster time during preliminaries at the CIF State swimming and diving championships at Clovis West High in Fresno.
Santa Margarita smashed its recently-set Orange County and national independent high school records by clocking a time of 3 minutes, 15.61 seconds, a staggering 2 1/2 second improvement from the CIF-SS Division 1 finals in Mission Viejo on May 6.
The independent records are for private schools such as Santa Margarita.
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The Eagles’ time Friday from the team of Macky Hodges (49.04), Teia Salvino (49.41), Teagan O’Dell (47.98) and Justina Kozan (49.18) places Santa Margarita about two-tenths of a second off Carmel of Indiana’s 2015 overall national high school record of 3:15.38.
The Eagles will have another chance to break the overall record during Saturday’s final. The girls 400 free relay could be held around 3:15 p.m.