Lady Rams make big splash in Conference Championships
October 25, 2023 at 11:26 p.m.
The Lady Rams raced to the second best showing in Port Chester High School swimming history, scoring more than 200 points and setting 15 personal records (PRs) while placing scorers in the top 20 events for the first time in the Section One Conference Championships last Saturday (10/21) in Peekskill.
Port Chester placed sixth overall with the top five Lady Rams point scorers including Jaina Gonzalez (23 points), Morgan Saunders (20), Chenoa Marquez (18), Mariangel Osorio (16) and Nicole Ortega (15).
Record-setting jet set
The PR record setters included:
Saunders (100-yard freestyle), Gonzalez (500-free), Osorio (500- and 200-free), Esmeralda Sanchez (100-backstroke and 100-free), Sophia Tellez (100- and 50-yard backstroke), Monika Tobar (100-yard breaststroke) and Daisy Ruiz (100- and 200-yard free).
Other PR record breakers included Osorio (200- and 500-free), Ariana Orellana (500-free), Ashley Zapata (200-free) and Andrea Barajas (100-free).
The 'amazing' team score
"What made the overall team score of 204 so amazing was that while we came up just shy of last year's 214, we were even more cohesive because every one of our swimmers placed within the top 20 scoring positions in every individual event," inspirational head coach Colleen Cahill said after her Lady Rams had made their big Conference splash at Peekskill Middle School.
And what made that score even more impressive was the fact that just a few years ago the Lady Rams’ overall team score was under 100 in the Conference Championships.
"That's when we started the process of building the team to where it is today," said Cahill, a former Fordham/Marymount Tarrytown swimmer who is now also a special education teacher at the high school as well as at the Thomas Edison School.
The rebuilding process
With assistant coach Anton Raskin, a former high school swimmer who is now a math teacher at the high school, Cahill set about to start that rebuild despite having to cope with various mid-season shutdowns at their Carver Center home pool due to—at various times—either the pandemic or pool repair.
Yet they overcame the obstacles by building team spirit during early morning 5:45 a.m. to 8 a.m. pre-school weekday practices when the Carver Center home pool was available, at the Rye YMCA pool when it wasn't and instituting land practices of calisthenics and simulated swim strokes when neither pool could be scheduled along with once-a-week workouts in the high school weight room.
Eye on the future
That kind of grueling schedule helped produce graduating seniors Jaina Gonzalez and Nicole Ortega who finished among the top 10 back and breast strokers in the Conference.
"I hope to see a new Jaina or Nicole emerge from our current bumper crop of promising freshmen like Jazlyn Fernandez, Estefana Bautista and Esmeralda Sanchez, a trio I expect to watch grow into our next top swimmers over the next three years," Cahill said.
She also expects to see big things accomplished in the butterfly by junior Kim Rivera and other key returnees like Marquez and Saunders.
New Rams swim coaches
She expects that further overall team improvement will come from her newly-formed pre/regular season practice team at the Carver Center over the winter. And she envisions instituting a similar program for the Rams swim team during the upcoming season because triathlon ace Kevin Clark has stepped down so she and Raskin will be stepping up to lead the boys’ swim team.
"We hope to help rebuild the Rams after three years of mid-season pool shutdowns with the same approach we used to remold the Lady Rams," Cahill said. "So now it is on to the boys’ swim season."
Judging by the results with the Lady Rams, that means the Rams will start making a bigger splash when it comes to PRs and improved showings in the League, Sectional and Conference championships.
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