Resurgent Rams swim team a work in progress with new P.C. Big 4 ranked with the area's best

January 11, 2024 at 1:56 a.m.

The 2023-24 Port Chester High School boys’ varsity swim team. Front row, from left: Hayden Anti, Jordan Moncada, Christian Yupangui, Daniel Recinos, Santiago Marquez, Jacob Gordillo, Sergio Morales, Brandon Moody, Luis Francis Sigua, Andres Chica, Cristian Montenegro. Second row, from left: Juan Mejia, William Langenbach, Jason Espinal, Christian Jaden, Miguel Infante-Rojas, Tiernan McLoughlin, Matthew Palma, Jeremy Zhapan, Daniel Morales, Aldair Mallama, Anthony LaBella. Back: Coaches Colleen Cahill and Anton Raskin. (Courtesy photo of Colleen Cahill)

Something special is happening for the Port Chester High School swimming Rams these days.

And that specialness became apparent even before they came off the winter break and splashed off against a newly-combined Mount Vernon/Tuckahoe team away Thursday (1/11, after press time).

Because the Rams have four swimmers attracting countywide notice and swam 12 personal bests in their last meet going into the break despite a home loss to a combined Peekskill/Hen Hud/Croton and Haldane (PHHCH) team.

The last time that happened was never.

Making a splash 

Which is to say that for the first time ever a quartet of Ram swimmers have been named to the LoHud Watch List of the best swimmers in Westchester and across the lower Hudson Valley.

The top tier LoHud Ram designees include seniors Miguel Infante-Rojas and Matthew Palma and sophomores Tiernan McLoughlin and Santiago Marquez.

"And we—and they—continue to improve in every meet," according to new inspirational Rams coach Colleen Cahill.

In their latest meet against PHHCH, for example, the Rams lost 55-38 to that combined squad made up of student-athletes from four high schools.

Riding the wave

But the Rams still swam 12 personal bests in that match. And every one of those Ram "bests" came from a team that was down to just eight swimmers last season until Cahill and assistant coach Anton Raskin stepped up their recruiting with the aid of three of their co-captains—Infante-Rojas, Palma and McLoughlin—and their team’s best swimmer Marquez, a Venezuelan import and an All-League cross country runner and former ocean swimmer and mountain bike rider as a triathlon athlete in his home country.

That gives Port Chester a Big 4 capable of competing against the area's best in a variety of distances.

And the results are starting to show.

Because the genuine enthusiasm of the new coaches and their captains and ace have rubbed off on the student body and resulted in a record number of tryouts (30) for a resurgent (and resurrected) Rams swim team program.

The mounting PRs

While the results have yet to show up in the wins column, the team progress shows in the regular stream of PRs (personal records) the Rams have racked up along the way.

In that PHHCH loss, for instance, the Rams had PRs in numerous events including Anthony LaBella placing first in the 50-freestyle.

The PRs included Infante-Rojas and Jordan Moncada in the 200-yard freestyle, McLoughlin the 200-yard individual medley (a combination of sprint, backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly), William Langenbach, Daniel Recinos and Jeremy Zhapan in the 50-yard freestyle and Palma in the 100-yard butterfly.

Other PRs included Marquez and Cristian Montenegro in the 100-yard backstroke and Aldair Mallama in the 100-yard freestyle.

Those PRs illustrate what Cahill and Raskin are trying to do with the new Rams—build a program where the Port Chester student-athletes keep showing progress in every meet.

Work in progress

That progress starts with simply showing up for the regular weekday practices that start at 5:45 a.m. at the Carver Center home pool. That kind of dedication to pre-school practice in all kinds of weather has led to improved performances sparked by the motivational coaching techniques of Cahill, a former collegiate swimmer for Fordham/Marymount, and Raskin, a distance swimmer for Yonkers HS.

That, plus the ongoing encouragement from their captains and ace have led to a close-knit team of boys who keep rooting each other on to PRs. That kind of positive energy leads to the Rams making progress as a work in progress. And if that kind of progress continues, the Ws will come and the Ls will help the team develop in a learning environment.

At least that's what Cahill and Raskin have already done in turning around a losing Lady Rams swim team culture and show signs of doing with the PRs being recorded by the ever-improving Rams thriving under a new dynamic coaching duo.

If you need any further sign of how much the Rams have improved, LoHud has already placed four Rams on their Watch List of the area's best swimmers—and that has never happened before.