Midway through the season with no wins, the Warrior swim team still has not lost hope to win a meet, looking toward the home dual meet against Cerritos and Rio Hondo colleges tomorrow.
Although the swim team lost its previous meet against Pasadena City, the women losing 79-48 and the men 69-62, swimmers have continued to stay competitive individually.
“We tried our best. We pushed the men’s team hard. The women’s team had a couple good races. We were really close until the latter part where we just couldn’t keep up,” swim coach Corey Stanbury said.
Although the men lost the meet, captain Shon Page succeeded to win two events, the 100-meter backstroke with a time of 1:03.42 and the 200-meter backstroke 2:17.70.
“(Andy) Harmatz swam very well, especially his two-hundred meter butterfly and two-hundred meter individual medley, which were his best [times] this season,” Stanbury said.
Although freshman swimmer Taylor McGowan wasn’t able to win an event, he still left the pool smiling for swimming his bests for both the 100-and 200-meter butterfly events.
“(Kyle) Atkins and (Mike) Gavola are pretty equal as the fastest sprint swimmers,” freshman freestyle swimmer Paul Hiney said.
For the women, freshman distance swimmer Candace Smith and sophomore backstroke swimmer Erica Shaw each won a couple of events, making them potential finalists for the South Coast Conference championships.
“(Shaw) is probably the fastest [backstroke] swimmer,” Hiney said.
Shaw won the 50-meter and 100-meter backstrokes, with times of 31.04 seconds and 1:07.94, beating her time at the Cuesta Invitational, where the team had dropped times significantly.
Smith won the 500-meter distance freestyle with a time of 5:50.28
“(Smith) is our distance swimmer,” women’s captain Alex Stumpf said.
Smith kept her head above water and pulled through, winning the 1,000-meter freestyle in a close race with opponent Jade Wilia, a freestyle swimmer from Pasadena City.
“She won the thousand by a tenth of second,” Stanbury said. “Those two girls were head to head and never more than half a body apart.”
Stanbury mentioned that the women’s breaststroke swimmers, Stacie Leavitt and Stumpf also did well.
A few swimmers were unable to swim in the last meet against Pasadena.
Among them were Hiney, who was out sick and Ramon Hurtado, who had missed too many practices.
“(Coach) said I could have taken third place [in breaststroke] based on my times,” Hurtado said.
For tomorrow’s dual meet, it looks as if it will be another close race, especially against the Cerritos women.
“There should be some good races,” Stanbury said.
“We’ll feel pretty good if we win against both of them,” freshman swimmer Caleb Scrivens said.
The swimmers do not worry about Rio Hondo, although this is the first time competing against them this season; instead they focus on the upcoming conference championships, which are April 16-18 at Chaffey College.
“Last time all of the team had best times. Hopefully, it will happen again this year; it looks like it will,” Stumpf said.
The team practices six days a week for two to three hours and most of the swimmers already know which events they will compete at the conference championships.
“We are training (for the championships) and we are not resting at all right now,” Stanbury said.
With the next two meets held in EC’s pool, the team is excited to see more familiar faces in the bleachers.
“We hope there will be a good turnout to support our team,” Scrivens said.
“It’s a good chance to see how hard we swim,” Hurtado said.
