Braddock’s Katia Garcia, Gulliver’s Nick Folker are Dade Swimming Coaches of the Year

Katia Garcia and Nick Folker oversaw two of Miami-Dade’s top high school swimming teams of the season. Each saw their team — Garcia’s boys’ team at Braddock, Foster’s girls’ team at Gulliver Prep — finish as runner-up at their respective state championship meet behind a slew of impressive all-around performances.

It’s for that reason that Garcia and Foster are the Miami Herald’s Dade Swimming Coaches of the Year.

For Garcia, this is her second consecutive honor after leading Braddock to back-to-back runner-up finishes in Class 4A. The Bulldogs won three individual events and one relay while also producing a pair of runner-up finishes.

Perhaps the team’s most dominant showing came in the 100 backstroke, with Braddock having five swimmers participate in the event and producing four of the top five finishers in the meet. Anthony Pineiro won the event in a time of 48.50 seconds for one of his two individual state titles. Teammate Dylan Ferguson followed in second, while Tomas Fermin was third and Andy Serrano-Pena was fifth.

Pineiro also won in the 100 butterfly and George Gonzalez won the 100 freestyle and was runner-up in the 200 freestyle. The quartet of Gonzalez, Pineiro, Ferguson and Fermin also won the 400 freestyle relay. Serrano-Pena finished fourth in the 100 butterfly. Ferguson finished seventh in the 500 freestyle, and Nicolas Kokidko has a seventh-place finish in the 100 freestyle. Braddock’s 200 freestyle relay of Marcelo Mansur, Fermin, Michael Baltodano and Kokidko placed fourth.

For Folker, the runner-up performance in Class 2A was the latest dominant performance for the Gulliver Prep girls team over the past decade. It marked the ninth time in the past 10 years that Gulliver posted a top-two finish. Gulliver won five consecutive state titles from 2014-2018 and again in 2021 while finishing as runner-up in 2022, 2022 and 2023.

Junior Reese Rosenthal led the team with a state championship in the 100 breaststroke and a fourth-place finish in the 50 freestyle. Junior Giovanna Musiello had a runner-up finish in the 200 individual medley and was third in the 100 backstroke. Junior Paige Eskra was sixth in the 100 breaststroke and seventh in the 200 freestyle.

Also, all three of Gulliver’s relays — the 200 medley (Musiello, Rosenthal, Sofia Moreno and Sofia Ciperski), 200 freestyle (Thereza Milano, Eskra, Rosenthal and Ciperski) and 400 freestyle (Milano, Musiello, Antonia Moreno and Eskra) — all came in second.