Lady Rams swim team breaks lots of school records in final meet and in Conference Championships
October 30, 2024 at 10:19 p.m.
Port Chester's ever-improving Lady Rams swim team has done what no other Lady Rams swim team has done before—and they did it twice within the past few weeks.
First they beat Mount Vernon 87-52 away on Oct. 15 in the last regular fall season meet to become the winningest Lady Rams swim team in Port Chester history by finishing with a 5-3 Conference record. And they did it while making quite a splash because they took nine first places in winning the historic meet.
Total team effort
And then they came back to set a school record in the Conference Championships last Saturday (10/26) in Yonkers by scoring Port Chester's most points ever—a total of 244—while finishing in third place (P.C.'s highest finish ever). Along the way, they set 17 PRs (personal records), the record setters including the first Lady Ram to ever medal in the prestigious championships.
"Every single swimmer on the Lady Rams contributed to making the season such a tremendous success," inspirational head coach Colleen Cahill said after the Conference Championships.
And then she put the fall season into perspective starting with the team becoming the winningest Lady Rams swim team in school history when they clinched that record by winning their final meet of the season against Mount Vernon.
The leading ladies
They beat the Mount by taking first place in most events including:
*The 200-yard medley relay swimming with a quartet revolving around Chenoa Marquez, Brenda Cordova, Adriana Martinez and Ashley Zapata.
*The 200-yard individual medley (Marquez).
*The 50-yard freestyle (Morgan Saunders).
*The 100-yard butterfly (Adriana Martinez)
*The 100-yard freestyle (Estefana Bautista)
*The 200-yard freestyle relay (Saunders, Kimberly Rivera, Marquez, Martinez)
*The 100-yard backstroke (Katherine Condori)
*The 100-yard breaststroke (Marquez)
*The 400-yard freestyle relay (Saunders, Cordova, Bautista, Martinez).
The Conference Championships
That set the stage for the Conference Championships.
And to understand what the Lady Rams accomplished there, it helps to know a little Lady Ram history.
From the team's founding in 2014 through 2018, the fledgling Lady Rams scored less than 40 points in the Conference Championships. They upped that number to 78 in 2019, skipped a year due to COVID in 2020 and then began a steady rate of improvement when Cahill took over as head coach by scoring 149 in 2021, 217 last year and 242 this year, edging Woodlands by one point for their record high third place finish.
"My strategy as a coach going into the Conference Championships was to focus on our relays as they gained the most points overall," Cahill explained. "I wanted to make them the fastest they could be, and then determine the best spot for individual placements based on the times we had performed in the past versus other teams. This paid off with two of our three relay teams earning medals and one missing the podium by a single place. We were at a disadvantage as some of our swimmers came down with illnesses and injuries during the week leading up to the championships and two of our senior swimmers had to take their PSAT/ACT exams. Yet we still were able to win big despite not having our full squad. Only 13 girls swam for us in the championships yet 13 seemed to be a lucky number for us!"
The P.C. record setters
She reeled off the accomplishments starting with Martinez, the freshman phenom who became the first swimmer in Lady Rams history to win an individual medal in the Conference Championships. Martinez finished third in the 100-yard butterfly and dropped her time so much from her race against the Mount on Oct. 15 that she broke her own PR.
The Lady Rams’ medal-winning relays included Saunders, Rivera, Marquez and Martinez racing to a second place finish in the 200-free with three of those same swimmers (Saunders, Marquez and Martinez) coming back to team up with Cordova to take third place in the 100-butterfly.
And then there were 17 PRs contributing to the Lady Rams’ cumulative point total including: Estefana Bautista in the 500-yard freestyle, Brenda Cordova in the 50-yard backstroke and 100 free, Anabel Jimenez in the 50- and 100-yard breaststroke and Adriana Martinez in the 50- and 100-yard free and the 50- and 100-yard butterfly.
And that’s not all because the PRs kept coming with Ariana Orellana in the 50- and 500-yard free, Daisy Ruiz in the 100- and 200-yard free, Morgan Saunders in the 100-yard freestyle, Julianna Trinidad in the 100-yard backstroke, Cielo Vintimilla in the 100-yard backstroke and Ashley Zapata in the 50-yard freestyle.
All in all, it added up to quite an overall haul.
Practices pay off
Cahill, a former collegiate swimmer for Fordham/Marymount, a Port Chester native and a teacher in the Port Chester School District, attributes the Lady Rams’ improvement to all their pre-school 5:45 a.m. weekday practices at their Carver Center home pool come rain, cold or shine as well as their swimming up against two higher Conference teams who convinced them that, despite their losses, they could compete against the area's best.
And did they ever. Especially in the past few weeks when they did what no other Lady Ram swim team ever did before not just once but twice.
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