Girls' swim wins third consecutive league championship

Mya McCannOpinion EditorWith an extraordinary third consecutive league championship, the girls’ swim team’s spirits are high and there are no regrets about the season“I’m very satisfied with the ending results,” senior Aviva Alvarez said. “This has been the highlight of my senior year.”After a nearly undefeated year, losing only to El Segundo, it was difficult to predict who was going to win league. The competition was fierce between Samo and El Segundo and it boiled down to whose team wanted it more and who would fight harder for the win.“We were nervous going to league because El Segundo is such a fast team… It was expected for El Segundo to win but we had better swimmers in areas that they did not,” Alvarez said. “We weren’t underdogs by any means though, but we were intimidated. The competition was an interesting thing to watch.”“[Beating El Segundo] was pretty surprising, but I’m extremely happy with the win,” senior  captain Tessa Franke said. “[The team and I] knew it was going to be a tough end, so we’re really proud that we were able to beat them. This just proves to us as a team that if we work hard we can accomplish anything.”This is Franke’s third year as captain of the girls’ swim team, as well as their third consecutive year winning league – a record in Samo history for girls’ swimming.Junior Aleya Spielnan hopes to carry on the trend of success next year. Spielman is worth watching in future seasons because of her extremely fast freestyle.With many members of the team increasing their abilities and strengths each year, next season is expected to bring home many more wins.“I’m excited for next year,” Spielnan said. “I have very high hopes for the team.Although the talents of the seniors are going to be deeply missed, we have some really fast younger swimmers to look forward to.”Sophomore Rashel Zakson has similar sentiments.“Next year I’m expecting to do well again.” Zakson said. “Even though we’re losing a lot of important people, we still have a solid base team. We have a really good chance to win league next year and a lot of diverse abilities so people can be moved around and swim in a variety of events.”Even with the minor emotional setback of losing CIF, the fact that the team was able to qualify in a Division II level is impressive.“We never expected to win CIF since we got bunked up to division two,” Alvarez said. “We were against some really fast teams from all over California and all of the preparation for league set us back physically. But next year the team will be more prepared for CIF because they’ll know what to expect.”“This year we didn’t do as well as we did last year for CIF,” Speilnan said. “Next year we are going to be even more motivated because we can see how our hardwork can pay off.”mmccann@thesamohi.com