Lady Rams swim team loses to conference power Peekskill
October 16, 2024 at 11:30 p.m.
With the fall chill hinting at the winter cold to come, Port Chester's swimming Lady Rams keep ignoring that baby, it's cold outside kind of feeling by heating up the winter pools with their overall improved performance and PRs (personal records) even when they lose.
In their latest meet last Wednesday (10/9), for example, the Lady Rams kept those PRs spinning, churning away to six PRs in a 54-39 loss to Peekskill, the team that tied for first place in their conference last year and is right up there with Westchester's best.
Time-shaving records
"I am very pleased and proud of the team's performance against a team that tied for first place in our conference and could have moved up in class," Lady Rams inspirational head coach Colleen Cahill said after the meet. "Knowing their strength, we did very well and showed tremendous growth...in all areas."
In perhaps the Lady Rams’ most noteworthy time-shaving performance during that meet, sophomore Anabel Jimenez dropped almost a full minute since the September time trials in the breaststroke, an extremely rare occurrence where improvements are usually measured in fractions of a second.
To put her performance in perspective, Cahill explained that Jimenez was clocked in 2:43 for the 100-yard breaststroke in the September time trials. She swam that distance in 1:57 against Peekskill.
"These drops in times are everything we are working for," Cahill said. "Anabel has found her stroke and is quickly catching up to our fastest breaststrokers. And she is also dropping her times swimming the 50-yard breaststroke leg on the relay. And that is no easy task."
The leading ladies
Other Lady Rams PRs in that momentous meet in their Carver Center home pool included:
*Jazlyn Fernandez in the 50-Yard Freestyle
*Chenoa Marquez in the 100-Yard Backstroke
*Adriana Martinez in the 200-Yard Individual Medley
*Kimberly Rivera in the 50-Yard Butterfly and 100-Yard Freestyle
*Sophia Tellez in the 50-Yard Backstroke
Marquez was the highest point-scorer for the Lady Rams with Morgan Saunders and Rivera a close second and third.
Saunders turned in what may well have been the most inspirational performance because she is coming off a leg injury that still prevents her from diving into the pool at the start of her individual and relay races. And that means she must stand in the pool and take off from a standing start, a handicap that costs her at least eight-tenths of a second and puts her at a significant disadvantage. And yet she still recorded her season's best time in the 50-yard freestyle.
"And that's a tribute to her competitive spirit and determination," Cahill said.
The swims ahead
She also said that "other standout swims" came from Martinez, Cordova, Tellez and Ariana Orellana and Natalia Guzman.
Cahill, a former collegiate swimmer for Fordham/Marymount and a special education teacher in the Port Chester School District, predicts more PRs and outstanding performances will come during the Lady Rams’ next away meets against Brewster Monday (10/21) at 5:30 p.m. and Tuesday (10/22) against Mount Vernon at 4:30 p.m. Because she expects that those kinds of improvements are indicative of what a hard-working team can accomplish when they keep coming out to practice in pre-class Carver Center pool workouts at 6 a.m. each weekday no matter what the wind chill factor is like outside as the fall season increasingly hints at the frigid winter cold to come.
When you have that kind of motivation and dedication in all kinds of weather, good things can happen for an ever-improving swim team. So the upbeat Cahill thinks her Lady Rams will do better than ever in the upcoming Conference Championships next Saturday (10/26) at 9 a.m. in Yonkers. And all those PRs indicate she could very well be right.
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