Last weekend’s Cuesta College Invitational showed just how far the Warrior swimming team has come this season. About 70 percent of all the swimmers swam a season or lifetime best time.

The Cuesta swim coach has not yet posted the results of the invitational, but the Warriors know they earned a individual victory.

“We weren’t in the top ten, which is OK,” swim coach Corey Stanbury said.

Sophomore swimmer Candice Smith swam her unshaved lifetime best of 5:50 in the 500-meter event.

“(Smith) did really well. She dropped sixteen seconds off her best time,” sophomore Erica Shaw said.

Paul Henry, Andy Harmatz, and Shon Page were other swimmers who swam their best times.

“All of the individual swimmers swam our best times. We were beating life and season times,” freshman long-distance and freestyle swimmer Jeff Craver said.

The swim team trains and competes in meets unshaved, which means they do not shave their entire body, which adds more resistance to the training.

“(Stanbury) has it setup to train and compete unshaved until the conference (championships). Then we shave,” Craver said.

Overall, the team was surprised at how well individuals like Shaw did. Shaw swam her lifetime best for the 100-meter backstroke.

“(Stanbury) was proud that we were dropping times like flies,” one swimmer said.

Javier dropped four seconds off his 200-meter and 100-meter breast stroke times.

“The point is that we are training really hard, but we’re still swimming faster which is a good sign,” Shaw said.

The Warriors will have to demonstrate their achievements tomorrow at Pasadena.

“We have an advantage to win the meet,” Stanbury said.

The Warriors advantage rests on the shoulders of the long-distance swimmers, as well as its backstroke swimmer, Shaw.

On the other hand, Pasadena holds the advantage in the butterfly events.

“It will be interesting since our teams are kind of even,” Craver said, “It will also be interesting to see how much [time] we can drop from Cuesta.”

Another advantage the Warriors hold is the diving team, as Pasadena is without one this season.

“The team did phenomenal,” dive coach Laurie Dawdy said about the recent Cuesta Invitational.

The Warriors are young and still learning, as is first time diver Kelly Turner.

“(Turner) went above and beyond (expectations) and places don’t show it since he is a beginner,” Dawdy said.

Among the freshman on the team is diver Jose Bahena, who has experience diving in high school.

“We did really well [at Cuesta], I competed in two dives off the one-meter board,” Bahena said.

David Austin, the Warriors only returning diver, also did well at Cuesta, falling only three points short of first place. Austin has recently been named captain of the Warrior dive team.

Tuesday, Brill Hernandez participated in diving practice for the first time since a shoulder injury.

Although there is no Pasadena dive team, the divers are not without competition.

“My biggest competitors are (Pedro) Quinones and (Austin),” Bahena said.

The points received for diving at the meets go toward the swimming total, since diving is seen more as a subcategory of the swim team.

“It really is different than swimming,” Dawdy said.

An unexpected competitor discovered at the Cuesta Invitational was Santa Monica City College.

The team taped the invitational in hopes of being able to see its errors and try to fix them.

“I’m proud of my [them],” Dawdy said.