At a glance, the prospects for Saratoga swimming do not look promising.
Last year’s records of 3-3 for varsity girls and 1-5 for boys do not foreshadow an amazing 2011 season. This year, the girls’ team has only 27 athletes, the school lacks male divers and the whole swim team sometimes cannot accumulate winning point totals at meets, according to the coaches. However, varsity boys’ swim coach Christian Bonner expects the boys and girls to have a strong year, despite the team’s difficulties.
“The boys’ varsity team is in a better position than they were in last year,” Bonner said. “This is mainly because we did not lose any of our key swimmers and have gained some new athletes, or older swimmers have improved. Also, this year our JV boys [may] go undefeated.”
The varsity girls’ team resurfaced with wins over Lynbrook and Homestead on March 25 and 17, respectively, after a loss against Gunn High on March 11. On the other hand, the varsity boys’ team lost to both Gunn and Homestead, but grabbed a close, 3-point victory over Lynbrook. Regarding the varying success among the teams, Bonner mentioned a swim team’s need for “depth,” or diversity.
“If you have kids who can score and win events, that’s fine and dandy, but the issue you have with swimming is it’s a points game,” Bonner said. “It’s the same reason, two years ago, our boys were the national champions in swimming, but we lost at CCS to Bellarmine.”
This year, 27 girls compose the girls’ swimming and diving teams, compared to 30 to 40 girls of last year’s team.
Sophomore Stephanie Chen said that this definitely makes it harder for both swimmers and coaches.
“Now, most swimmers have to swim four events, the maximum number you can do. Even with that, we don’t fill up all the spaces for the events,” Chen said. “This makes it harder to get more points, since the other team has more swimmers and thus more points.”
Varsity girls’ coach Kristen Thomson, however, is optimistic about the small team size.
“I can’t run a full lineup. However, the small team size makes it so everyone gets to know who everybody is a lot easier,” Thomson said. “ At this point, to get the spirit, to get the tightness of the group, I think that it’s worth it, even though it means we might have lower scores. Swimming is not all about scoring.”
Additionally, Thomson and Bonner see the value of diving in supplementing the teams’ scores. However, Saratoga High has only two divers: senior Lauren Gardanier and freshman Maya Srinivasan.
“Our diving team has doubled. We went from one to two!” Thomson said. “This is the biggest diving team I’ve ever had.”
Both coaches think more success lies ahead. “It’s a young group. They’ve got lots of spirit,” said Thomson. “I’m very happy that this season has started.”
Due to printing deadlines, The Falcon was unable to print the results the April 1 meet against Monta Vista High.