With playoffs halfway done and a historic season coming to a close, Hackley Varsity Swimming has been the team to watch over the past few weeks.
The boys’ side has seen a year of rebuilding and growing the program. This season, they have an especially young team, with two eighth graders making the team.
“Both eighth graders, Dan Rotenberg and Luke Schooly, are great new assets to the team,” said senior captain Asher Navas.
At the Winter Sting meet, freshman Will Sevilla had an outstanding performance that Asher called one of the highlights of the season.
“Will Sevilla pulled through in the 200 m free event, leaving one of the league’s best swimmers from Poly Prep stunned,” Asher said.
Another big highlight of the season was overcoming Trinity in a medley event at the Ivy meet. “The boys got first in the medley relay, which was exciting since Trinity is the number one in the league for boys,” Asher said.
Last year, the girls had an exceptional end to their season, which made the standards high coming into this season. However, the girls were able to emerge Ivy League champions, breaking records on the way.
Varsity Swim coach Brain McClintock is thrilled with the team’s accomplishments.
“The highlight of the girl’s season is we were 8-0, undefeated in the league, and won the Ivy League championship,” he said.
Senior swim captain Kayce Park was ecstatic to see the team challenging school and league records, especially as this is her last year on the team.
“We broke two relay records from last year; the 400 free relay was broken by Lola Frey, Ella Chen, Heidi Chen, and Kate Masters. They broke the 400 relay record for Hackley as well as the Ivy League record by two whole seconds, which is a lot,” she said.
Last week at the Ivy League championship, the girls were tied with Trinity until the final event, and that record-winning relay put them over the top and made them Ivy Champions.
Thinking about next year, Coach McClintock hopes to continue growing a strong boy’s team and bring up younger swimmers to the team to fill the gaps of the graduating seniors. Coach McClintock anticipates a harder season for the girls next year as there are eight seniors graduating which leaves a big gap to fill.
