After a long and arduous season of swimming, Encinal swimmer’s hard work has officially paid off at the West Alameda County Conference (WACC) Championships on Friday, May 2nd. Encinal came in sixth overall right behind their rival Alameda High. Though this may not seem great it was somewhat expected. They were the best of the lower half of the league which for them is pretty good, especially considering the fact that this is a very young team with a lot of room for growth.
Swimmers individually competed in multiple events against nine East Bay High Schools: Alameda, Piedmont, Castro Valley, Berkeley, Bishop O’dowd, San Leandro, Mt. Eden, Arroyo, and Hayward. Prior to the WACC Championships Encinal held the spot of seventh in the conference for both girls and boys but after the meet they moved up to sixth for women and down to eighth for boys. The slip on the boys end is most likely due to men’s swimmers from other teams having to miss some meets due to important club meets such as Western Zones which took place at the beginning of April.
“I’m excited because it’s my first meet in a while, but I’m also pretty nervous because I haven’t swam in a while.” Said Junior Mako Kashimura a few days before the meet. Mako is our top ranked Encinal swimmer, who holds the 100 yard butterfly record for the school. She also has been injured for quite some time throughout this season, for total of five months, with her first meet back being the week prior to WACC Championships against Alameda High.
Due to this injury and time off Kashimura didn’t perform at the same level she did at WACC Championships before but she still did place second overall in her 100 yard butterfly. She was just shy of making the NCS consideration time in this event, missing it by 57 hundredths of a second. Even then she still did receive medals in all four of her events with them being second place, fourth place, fifth place, and sixth place medals.
“I think I’m gonna do good,” Said junior, Bao Son Nguyen-Trong. “Be out there, enjoy, and have fun swimming with people. And I think it’s gonna go really well.” Bao Son is our top mens swimmer at Encinal who mainly swims the 100 yard butterfly and 200 yard freestyle, which is exactly what he swam at WACC Championships.
During Championships Bao Son was aiming to achieve an NCS (North Coast Section Championship) qualifying time. Like some other swimmers on our team he missed the cut slightly. For his 100 yard butterfly he missed the time by 7 hundredths of a second. This was somewhat disappointing for him but overall his swims were still very good.
Despite missing some NCS times the team in general did very well. Most of the team went best times and received duck charms in reward of that. The charms were a fun way to motivate swimmers and one could say that it worked well with many swimmers receiving at least one and some even multiple. Overall Encinal had a great and rewarding season that was highlighted very well at that WACC Championships.
