Weakness in numbers prevented the women’s swim team from doing well against Cerritos and Chaffey in the first conference meet of the season, losing to Cerritos, 87-35, and losing to Chaffey, 104-18.

The team can look forward to improving their times at the Cuesta or Chaffey Invitational this weekend.

“They’re just a lot deeper and stronger than we are, especially Chaffey, which is probably one of the top four or five teams in the state,” swimming and diving coach Corey Stanbury said.

The Warriors opened their conference competition against two very competitive teams.

“Some of the other teams we are going to swim against might be a very interesting story, so we’ll see what happens,” Stanbury said.

Best times included Kaela Stager, who swam the 1,000-yard freestyle with a time of 13:57.70 and Lisa Odland, who swam the 50-yard breaststroke with a time of 35.10.

The swimmers were training to their limits the week before the meet and fatigue was setting in.

“The entire week, coach was pushing us harder than he has ever pushed us before,” Odland said. “We didn’t really have a chance anyway because our team is so small and they are so large.”

Other swimmers have been frustrated with having a small team, which makes it difficult to be competitive against teams like Cerritos and Chaffey, which are considerably larger.

“It would be really nice to have more swimmers because we could get more points for competing in more events,” 100-yard breaststroke swimmer Alexandra Stumpf said.

The team does not have swimmers who specialize in particular events; therefore, it is forced to enter swimmers in events they may not be qualified for.

The team has only four out of eight swimmers who are distance swimmers.

“It’s challenging to race with people who are good in the butterfly event when you’re average in that event,” Stanbury said.

At the Cuesta Invitational, the team is expecting to compete against more than 650 athletes from around the state.

Because it is an invitational, the team is focusing on improving its times and practicing for the conference championship.

“Our goal is to try to improve the times we have done thus far, but we’re not backing off on the training we are doing,” Stanbury said. “We are going very hard, so a lot of times we get to meets and we are really tired.”