After a strong preseason, the team is improving with each meet. The strong leadership from the upperclassmen and captains are providing the team with optimism heading into the regular season.
The scrimmage against Sherwood on Dec. 3 allowed the team to get back into the swimming mindset. In the boys’ 200-yard medley relay, the team of senior Daniel Chen, juniors Jeffrey Qin and Eric Lu and sophomore Brian Xi came in first with the fastest time of 1:47.19. In the boys’ 200-yard freestyle, senior Alex Li finished in first with a time of 1:47.39, 20 seconds ahead of the next finisher. In the boys’ 100-yard freestyle Qin finished in first with a time of 50.52, .49 seconds faster than Li who finished in second.
In the girls’ 200 yard-IM, sophomore Juliana Parra finished in first with a time of 2:28.62. In the girls’ 50-yard freestyle, senior Lillian Henry finished in first with a time of 26.00 and sophomore Cece Zhao finished in second with a time of 26.02. In the girls’ 100-yard butterfly sophomore Claire Martin finished in first with a time of 1:06.11 and sophomore Rita Zhang finished in second with a time of 1:06.61. “For our first scrimmage, I thought the team performed really well,” junior Lauren Woodward said.
The dive team was led by senior Regan Westwood, who finished first in the girls one-meter dive with a score of 90.70, and freshman Quinn Westwood finished second in the boys one-meter dive with a score of 92.04.
The team’s first meet was against Richard Montgomery on Dec. 10. Although the team battled hard and dominated most of their events, the boys’ team lost by a score of 86-69 and the girls’ team lost by a score of 99-57.
In the boys’ 200-yard medley relay, seniors Bryan Jong, William Shen, Michael Tran and Justin Zhou finished in first with a time of 1:45.96. In the boys’ 200-yard IM, junior Jonathan Yune finished in first with a time of 2:10.15 and Xi finished in second with a time of 2:11.30. The results were flip-flopped in the boys’ 100-yard freestyle as this time Xi came in first with a time of 52.12 and Yune came in second with a time of 52.37. Finally, in the boys’ 400-yard freestyle relay the team of Yune, Xi, Tran and junior Harvey Sun finished in first with a time of 3:36.84. In the boys’ 100-yard breaststroke senior William Shen came in first with a time of 1:05.83.
In the girls’ 400-yard freestyle relay, the team of seniors Jocelyn Merkin, Afroditi Katsigiannakis, Sharon Sun and Parra came in first with a time of 4:04.29. “I think we could have definitely performed better but for our second meet it was really close so I would say we had a really good start,” Yune said.
In the boys’ one meter dive, Quinn Westwood came in first with a score of 168.95 and in the girls’ one meter dive sophomore Jennifer Weiss finished in second with a score of 98.65 and sophomore Sarah Rankin finished in fourth with a score of 80.30.
The team’s next meet was against BCC on Dec. 17.

Ryan Ullman

Sports Editor