This year’s swim team has a lot of new faces. With a new coach and new swimmers the handful of returners and team manager they are looking towards a promising season.
At the age of nine-years-old Grace Arreola started to learn how to swim. That passion has stayed with Arreola as she has “been swimming my whole life and wanted to swim for the school and meet new people.” Arreola swims the 500-yard free, 200 IM, and the 4 X 100 free relay. She says the difference between last year and this year is, “This year we have a more filling team as well as more help from our coaches.” This year the team has two coaches out on deck. The varsity team has a BC swimmer Brandon Stevenson. He is bringing a lot of knowledge and guidance to this year’s varsity squad. “Our coaches are good this year our varsity coach has made drastic changes in the way we swim for the better and pushes us to be our best every day,” added Arreola. Personally she wants to improve, “my stream lines and strokes” this season. In terms of competition she feels that, “I have a few people in mind from different schools, but this one swimmer from Independence that swims the 500 as me is really good and will be the hardest person for me to beat this year.”
Another swimmer Diego Rodriguez has been swimming since his eight grade year. He also swims club as well as for Ridgeview. Rodriguez swims the 500-yard free, 200 yard free, 4 X 50-medley, and the 4 X 50 free. He feels that the teams has, “good spirit and we work hard when it’s time to work hard.” He feels that the team, “is great. We have a lot of talent and good spirt. I’m very excited to see them grow throughout the season.” Personally he finds the hardest thing in swim is IM, “because you need to be able to stay strong the whole race and swim all four strokes.” Rodriguez feels the biggest competition this year is BCHS because, “they are the ones that beat me last year and I personally do not like there pool.”
Some of the other swimmers feel that Liberty and Stockdale are also competitors this season because their teams are filled with talented and fast swimmers. But with these schools as competitions Arreola and Rodriguez both hope personally they can make it to valley. “I see myself swimming my heart out and hopefully getting first in our league, but more importantly is making it to valley,” said Rodriguez. Arreola added, “I hope to go to valley for my 500 and cut my time from 32 seconds to 25 seconds by the end of the season.”