Splash Brothers Rams swim team makes waves while splitting a deuce in season-opening meets
December 19, 2024 at 1:50 a.m.
Port Chester's Splash Brothers started off the winter season with a splash, making waves by beating Woodlands 51-38 for the first time in several years last Tuesday (12/10) in their home pool at the Carver Center.
And OK, the Rams swim team isn't all bros, they just act like it because they are so close knit behind inspirational head coach Colleen Cahill who fosters a family dynamic.
And that dynamic seemed to be working from the outset.
Until the flu bug that is going around bit the bros, five swimmers had to be sent home from school as the virus spread and the short-handed Rams lost their second meet to Poughkeepsie Monday (12/16).
The good and the not so
Despite the cold weather-wise and familial contagion-wise, the swimming Rams have a lot of good things happening along with the sneezing and freezing that are part of the daily early morning practices.
The winter season got off to a good start before it ever really started because junior two-time All-League cross-country runner Santiago Marquez chose to come out for the swim team instead of running track indoors even though he has a better shot at winning a college athletic scholarship in T&F than he does in swimming.
Decisions, decisions
As much as he loves to run as a triathlon competitor par excellence, Santiago adores the water more as a former ocean swimmer in his native Venezuela, so he wanted to be part of the Rams swim team rather than run indoors. And did the swim team ever want him because he is already the best competitive swimmer in Port Chester history.
Junior Tiernan McLoughlin at the turn in the 100-Yard Breaststroke during the Port Chester Rams’ home victory over Woodlands on Tuesday, Dec. 10 at the Carver Center.Courtesy of Colleen Cahill
The results showed immediately in that impressive season-opening win over Woodlands.
Marquez handed off with a big lead from the get-go, swimming the first backstroke leg in the 200-Yard Medley with Tiernan McLoughlin (breaststroke), Brandon Moody (fly) and Christian Yupanqui (freestyle) taking it from there to a first place finish in the meet's first event.
The band of brothers was off and swimming.
Beat goes on
Jacob Gordillo and Alex Van der Wateren (love that name for a swimmer) finished one-two in the second event, the 200 meters. McLoughlin followed with a second place finish in the 200-Yard IM (individual medley), Anthony La Bella and Andrew Palma also finished second in the 50-Yard Free and 100-Yard Butterfly, respectively, and Moody came in first in the 100-Yard Free.
And the beat went on with five consecutive first place finishes: Marquez won the 500-Yard Free; Alex Van der Wateren, Moody, McLoughlin and Yupanqui won the 200-Yard Freestyle relay; Marquez took first place in the 100-Yard Breaststroke; McLoughlin won the 100-Yard Breaststroke and Yupanqui, Alex Van der Wateren, Adam Van der Wateren and Marquez came home first in the 400-Yard Free.
It doesn't get much better than that.
And it didn't. Maybe it was all those pre-school practices or maybe it was that flu bug going around the high school biting the Splash Brothers so it spread throughout the close-knit Ramily swim team, but whatever it was, the Rams were shorthanded in their away meet loss against Poughkeepsie.
Come in out of cold
Yupanqui set personal records in the three events he swam—the 50-Yard Free and Fly and the 100-Yard Free. Andre Dias, Abner Gabriel, Camilo Mamani, Alan Alvarez and Andrew Palma swam well in the 100-Yard Free, and Alvarez came back to finish strong in the 50-Yard Free as well. But the missing Splash Brothers proved costly, the team lost, and it made for a long ride home from Poughkeepsie.
But the team will get better in more ways than one. And judging by their continual improvement in practice, how hard they work and the way they compete, Cahill thinks her team will make this a winter season to remember.
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