Arcadia’s Varsity and Junior Varsity Coed swim teams have long been a point of pride in Arcadia High School (AHS) athletics, and their meet against Pasadena High School (PHS) on Tuesday, Apr. 11 was no exception. With the sun shining on AHS’s Aquatics Center, the meet ended with an overwhelming victory of 42-1 overall. Individually, Varsity Girls scored 134-23, Varsity Boys scored 116-50, and both Girls and Boys JV scored 127-0.

The meet started off strong, with a score of 16-1 by 4:10 p.m., when a 10 minute break was taken. Some highlights from before the break include the Boys Varsity’s Individual Medley, with Zackary Zhou in lane three finishing first with a time of 2:18, more than 10 seconds ahead of the second place winner, Ethan Hang, also from Arcadia. Girls Varsity also took the win in their Individual Medley event, with Arcadia winning the top three places.

The meet continued to go well after the break, with the JV teams continuing to compete against each other in events such as the 50 yd breaststroke. The first place winner, Aaron Kwok, who was from the Boys JV team, clocked in at 33 seconds, but the second place winner, Marin Lu from the Girls JV team, wasn’t far behind with a time of 36 seconds. The meet ended with the Varsity Boys team participating in the 400 yd Freestyle Relay, with lane three from Arcadia taking the victory.

“Being that it was our first meet back from the break… we swam better than I thought might have been the case,” explained swim coach Janice Clark. “We did have a fair number of best times that I updated, so I was really happy about that and I feel like that means we’re still on track for the end of the season to end up where we want to be.”

PHS did not have a JV team, forfeiting their events in that field as a result. Since the JV members still had to compete, however, the boys and girls teams swam against each other, scoring free points in the process.

“I think I performed well overall during the meet. Both JV teams didn’t have any competition other than themselves as PHS didn’t have any JV teams,” said freshman Melinda Yu, who is a member of the Girls JV team. “Both Varsity teams won also, so we all won in the end, which is why I think the team performed well overall as we came in with a four way win.”

“My team performed pretty well, especially coming out from the break, but what could have been better for this meet was that Pasadena had a JV team, so our JV team could practice racing against other teams,” said Girls Varsity member freshman Olivia Deng. 

“As far as focus, that’s just people not being focused on what they need to do and being ready to get up on the blocks on time,” said Coach Clark, adding that “it’s just up to each individual swimmer to be focused and know how to do their job.” In this way, Coach Clark explained, “the JV’s, in a way, did better than the Varsity [swimmers].” 

One of the most unique and challenging aspects of the meet was that it was the first time the swimmers competed since coming back from spring break. Although the team did hold practices over the break, many athletes were out of town and only just got back into practices once school resumed. Fortunately, this meet ended up being a good way to get the team back into their usual system before the next few meets. 

“Coming back from break, we’ll get a good bounce off this meeting…everyone’s back in the groove now,” expressed Coach Clark. 

Overall, the meet went well for Arcadia’s swim team, with several best times being achieved and a definite victory, despite it occurring directly after spring break. The swim team will only have a few more meets, including against Crescenta Valley, before their preliminaries and league finals. In these, they hope for “clean meets”, or meets without any disqualifications. Good luck to the Arcadia swim team on all their future endeavors, and congratulations on all their accomplishments so far!

Photo courtesy of Arcadia DCI intern Jodie Tran