Swim team enters league finals despite loss of TSM swimmers

Alison GuhStaff WriteDespite having faced many obstacles this season, Samo swim has dominated at numerous meets this season and hopes to continue on to win league for both boys and girls.This season, many of Samo swim’s strongest swimmers were lost to Team Santa Monica (TSM), Santa Monica’s local swim club at Santa Monica College. Because of TSM’s new rules, instated by their new swim coach, which prohibit TSM swimmers from also swimming for Samo, many swimmers were forced to chose between swimming for their club team and swimming for Samo. TSM, being an extremely time-consuming, serious team, breeds the fastest of swimmers, some of which have considerably helped Samo swim in the past.“The team is doing its best to adapt as well as possible,” boys’ varsity captain Brian Kong said. “The TSM swimmers are power houses on the team and every swimmer counts. There have been multiple instances where previous swimmers, now exclusively at TSM, could have changed the outcome of the meet. When a swimmer is absent, everyone else has to pull more weight.”Nonetheless, the team’s main focus this season has been on improving teamwork and working together towards league finals, even in the absence of TSM swimmers.“We’ve got Andy Lau, we’ve got Aleya Spielman, [but] it’s more of a team effort this year because we’re not relying on a couple of superstars, but rather sharing the wealth,” Samo swim coach Matthew Flanders said.Girls’ varsity captain Aleya Spielman believes it is this same teamwork that will help girls’ varsity win Ocean League for the fourth year in a row.“I feel like our chances [of winning league] are pretty high,” Spielman said. “In a few events we have some really fast swimmers, and in other events while we don’t have the fastest swimmers, we still have girls who will place. At league, it’s not just about the best person. It depends on all the people getting third, fourth, fifth that will make the points add up.”Besides losing swimmers to TSM, Samo swim has also lost several swimmers to injury.“I dislocated my ACL joint in my shoulder from doing butterfly, so I haven’t really been able to practice as much as everyone else,” junior Tori Setayesh said. “I think that everyone just had to work a bit harder and to their full potential, but we’re all able to work together and help each other out.”The loss of swimmers to injury not only prevents the individuals from swimming, but also forces other team members to compensate for the missing swimmers by swimming events that they do not normally swim.“As a team, it’s affecting us because we are no longer earning the points that we should have earned from winning or placing in our events,” junior Dorcas Kong, who was also injured this season, said. “Flanders has to rearrange the whole swim meet and event schedule in order to fit the criteria, and a lot of people have to change their regular events. However, there are a lot of people on our team that will just swim their hardest for every event.”At their recent Ocean League Preliminary Meet, girls’ varsity took a close second, 15 points behind South Torrance girls’ varsity. The meet at Beverly Hills High School determined who qualified for Ocean League Finals, which took place on May 4.According to Dorcas Kong, if the girls’ team swims exceptionally well, winning Ocean League is an attainable goal.“It all comes down to our relays,” Dorcas Kong said. “If we can improve our times by even a little, that could be the deciding factor in the championship.”Though the results from the Ocean League Preliminaries were sent out with Samo boys’ varsity in second, Samo swim members believe that the first place team, Culver, should have been disqualified for crossing over into another teams’ lane.“The Culver coach tried to argue [the disqualification] with the referee and when they sent out the results, Culver was not disqualified,” Dorcas Kong said. “However, they’re having a meeting with just the coaches and try to figure out what to do about it.”Ultimately, swim hopes to end the season on a strong note by winning league and continuing to dominate as a team.“Everybody has been swimming their hardest and giving it their all to win,” junior Adrian Tang said.aguh@thesamohi.com