Lady Rams swim team beats Brewster, eyes P.C. High School record for wins

Team heads into Conference Championships in Yonkers Saturday

October 23, 2024 at 9:38 p.m.

Port Chester High School girls’ swim team captains, from left, Morgan Saunders, Sophia Tellez and Ariana Orellana all scored vital points in individual events to contribute to the team’s 56-37 win over Brewster Monday (10/21). (File Photo/Westmore News)

Port Chester's Lady Rams swim team warmed up for the Conference Championships Saturday (10/26) in Yonkers by beating Brewster away Monday (10/21). In the process, they came within one win of becoming the winningest swim team—boys and girls—in school history with one regular fall season meet to go later in the week   against Mount Vernon.

But to reach that point, they had to first beat Brewster in the wonderfully named Green Chimneys School pool because without that W, their dreams of having the best record in school history would go up in smoke.

Pivotal relays in last event

And beat Brewster they did by a score of 56-37 with the seesaw dual meet coming down to the last relay event with the Lady Rams A and B team coming through with a first and second place finish in crunch time to seal the deal.

But it wasn't easy. Because Brewster pulled away in the early going.

Brenda Cordova and Chenoa Marquez finished one-two in the individual 200-yard medley to give P.C. their first lead.

 That seemed prophetic of what was to come because Cordova and Marquez finished first and second as the Lady Rams’ top scorers with freshman phenom Adriana Martinez a close third.

And the individual and relay point scores kept coming.

Personal Bests streak

And the consecutive meet streak of PBs (personal bests) continued.

Martinez, for example, set a PB in winning the 100-yard butterfly. And Katherine Condori hit a PB in winning the 100-yard backstroke.

And the Lady Rams kept either winning individual events or scoring vital points with seconds, thirds and fourths or some combination thereof.

Estefana Bautista splashed her way to a first place finish in the 200-yard freestyle with Ariana Orellana scoring with third place points.

The vital point scorers

Morgan Saunders, still recovering from a leg injury, came in second in the 50-yard freestyle with Kimberly Rivera contributing fourth place points. Saunders came back to finish third in the 100-yard freestyle. And Cordova and Orellana finished two-three in the 500-yard freestyle. Sophia Tellez came in second in the 100-yard backstroke. And Marquez swam her season's best time in the 100-yard backstroke while finishing second with Anabel Jimenez coming in a strong third. That set the stage for the pivotal A and B relay team wins that clinched the meet.

That gave the Lady Rams a 4-3 Conference record, one shy of the school's best-ever Conference finish going into their final regular fall season meet against Mount Vernon later in the week.

Head coach Colleen Cahill said "swimming up" and "swimming well" against higher-ranked, out of conference teams gave the Lady Rams confidence they could compete against the best even though they lost those two meets, giving them an overall 4-5 record.

Eye on the prize 

"We hope to set the new season record against Mount Vernon," Cahill said. And while she takes the meets one at a time, never looking too far ahead, she thinks her team can "do well too" at the Conference Championships Saturday.

"Each team can enter up to four swimmers in an individual event with a max of any swimmer swimming two individual events and two relays or one individual event and three relays," she explained. "With relay events offering the most points, we will have to be extremely strategic in putting everyone in the right events at the championships."

So Cahill, a former Fordham/Marymount collegiate swimmer, will spend a lot of time over the next few days figuring out where each Lady Ram swimmer can gain the most points individually to contribute to the team's overall score in the Conference Championships.

But first things first, and Cahill has her fingers crossed that her Lady Rams can get by Mount Vernon on their way to setting a new school record for most swim team wins in a season. And given how hard they have worked with 6 a.m. pre-school weekday practices in their Carver Center home pool, it would be good to see them go out winners.