Trojan boys place tenth at NCS

The Castro Valley swim teams had an outstanding season and continued to swim quickly all the way to NCS at the Concord Community Pool on May 15 and May 16.

The 40 fastest swimmers in the North Coast were taken for each event. This year, Castro Valley had five girls and six boys who qualified for individual events at NCS: Jessica Mi, Helen Senchev, Lucianna Balica, Jaya Garcia, Laura Macchiavello, Brian Corbett, Carson Sand, Donavon Watts, Erik Clemensen, Dominic Canepa, and Da Di and two more boys and girls, Anthony Chew, Sebastian Balica, Olivia Wallace, and Jenevieve Garcia, for relays. All the qualifiers swam their events on Friday at trials. The top 16 then swam at finals the following day.

During preliminaries, our swimmers placed a lot of focus and effort into their races.

The meet started off with the girls’ 200 medley relay, where Jaya Garcia, Wallace, Jenevieve Garcia, and Balica sped through the race and dropped almost a second off their entry time.

Mi started off the individual events by swimming the 200 freestyle, in which she swam extremely well.

Jaya Garcia and Di swam the 200 IM, where they both did an outstanding job, shaving seconds off of their entry times.

As day one of NCS sped by, many more events were swum, including the 500 yard freestyle, where Senchev and Canepa powered through the entire 20 laps of their swim.

The girls and boys 200 free relays flew by as all the Trojans speedily swam their legs in the relay.

The second to last event came along,  the 100 breast, in which three Trojan boys, Sand, Watts, and Corbett, raced each other. Sand comfortably won the race, almost a second ahead of the second place finisher.

The day ended with the girls and boys 400 freestyle relay. In the girls relay, Balica, Mi, Garcia, and Macchiavello finished in 21th place, only a few seconds off of qualifying for the top 16. The boys, Sand, Watts, Clemensen, and Canepa, finished in 13th place, securing a spot for day two.

Although some felt as if they could have swum faster and weren’t entirely content with the outcomes of their races, the Trojans gave their all throughout the entire meet, and the season as a whole.

“I didn’t know so many people could do so fantastic in just one season,” said Corbett.

On day two, the boys racked up points and proudly represented Castro Valley. Clemensen finished in 14th  place for the 50 free, getting the boys three points, while Watts, finished eighth in his 100 free and 16th in his 100 breast, collecting a total of 12 points.

Sand left his teammates, fellow competitors, and audience in awe after watching him crush his competition. He finished first in the 200 IM, where his time was only .42 seconds off the NCS meet record. Following that victory, he then won the 100 breast, just missing the NCS meet record by .11 seconds. He scored a total of 40 individual points for the Trojans.

The boys also swam fast in both of their relays, finishing fourth in the 200 freestyle relay and tenth in the 400 freestyle relay, scoring another 44 points.

“It’s always awesome to watch my teammates swim fast, it inspires me to swim fast as well,” stated Chew.

The boys placed tenth overall. Great job Trojans!