SAN JOSE, CALIF.— With the Spring sport season beginning at the end of January, the swim teams’ tryouts have ended, practice has begun, and the first meets have started. Here is the Silver Creek High School swim team.

There are four coaches on the swim team. They are Coaches Marc Alpert, Will Henninger, Cyprus Nguyen and Hailey Luescher, and they are constantly preparing their team, doing reps for the upcoming meets. According to Coach Henninger, they have about eighty students in the team, about half girls and half boys, currently competing in forty different events, which are split into the four stroke variants of freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly. Evening Practice starts at 4:15 p.m. and goes until 6 p.m. All the practices start with the team dressing out and laying down their swim lines.

 “The races range from swimming fifty yards to one hundred yards to two hundred yards, or a relay race swim,” says a senior. “I mean, you do need some swimming knowledge obviously, but it’s actually easier than you might think to get in the team on Junior Varsity. I have been competing all four years of High School since my freshman year.” The JV captain, also a senior, is also in agreement with this.

The team is split up into Varsity and Junior Varsity, with Varsity having morning practice, and Junior Varsity having evening practice. Coaches Alpert and Luescher are the two varsity coaches, while Coaches Henninger and Nguyen are the two Junior Varsity coaches. “This is our first year having four coaches”, says Henninger. “The team was growing so big we have to have four now.” The team is co/ed, with Girls and Boys practicing together, although they compete in different events.

The team’s first meet was on March 6 starting at 3:00 p.m., the Blossom Valley Athletic League Championship against Prospect High School in Saratoga at Silver Creek’s pool. The team did well against Prospect, “taking the freestyle events,” according to a freestyle swimmer on the team named Michael Forschinger.

The swimming pool here at Silver Creek

Photo Credit:Nischal Jasti