New Swimmers Debut in Meet

In back-to-back MIL swim meets last weekend, the girls’ team finished sixth. Oceana Madani had fifth place finishes in both the 200-meter individual medley (three minutes, 1.82 seconds) and the 100-meter butterfly (1:22.38). On Saturday, Michelle McGuire and Genevieve Kikukawa also took fifth in their categories, McGuire in the 100-meter breaststroke (1:24.89) and Kikukawa in the 100-meter backstroke (1:16.79).

As a team, the girls improved their time in the 200-meter medley relay. After finishing sixth in the event on Jan. 17, the team finished third on Friday (2:14.03), a five-second improvement from the previous meet.

“Every meet is an improvement, especially when they’re close together,” said Head Coach Jess Ford.

A short-handed boys’ team came in eighth overall on Friday. In individual competition, Michaiah Soares came in fifth in the 200-meter freestyle (2:20.69), while Tanner Mosher finished seventh (1:20.09) in the 100-meter breaststroke. On Saturday, Mosher improved to sixth (1:22.36) in the same category, while Michaiah Soares took seventh in both the 50-meter (25.34) and 100-meter freestyle (58.66).

Ford said first-time competing swimmers Kaiea Dowling and Marianna Campos also got a chance to experience MIL competition.

“We have a few kids racing for the first time in the season this past weekend,” she said. “[Now] everybody’s been in the water.”