Struggling to find footing on the block
After a rocky preseason from February to mid-March, the Diamond Bar High School swimming team dominated in their first league meet against Rowland Heights.
Due to complications with pool plumbing and turbulent weather, the preseason began with a choppy start for the 126 Brahma swimmers’ ability to condition.
The members also had very little time to advertise the tryouts for the boys and girls teams due to the delayed hiring of a new coach.
“There have been multiple days where there was pouring rain and slight thunder. Due to this, we could not practice and condition for our upcoming meet,” sophomore Claire Lee said. “Also, we did not get a new swim coach until the day the season started.”
The lack of conditioning made it difficult to prepare for the team’s preseason swim meet against Ayala, in which the boys emerged victorious, but the girls suffered a blowout loss.
In their second preseason meet against Chino Hills, the boys continued their success, while the girls continued to face struggles in a four-point loss.
However, with the pool now fixed and the introduction of head coach Monique Tahauri, the team has a consistent practice schedule of two-hour training sessions from Monday to Friday to help with conditioning.
“I’m not always focused on just doing hard sets. I like implementing different drills to perfect strokes and getting their technique,” Tahauri said. “We do sprints to get speed behind [the swimmers] and overall improving technique because even the way their arms come up out of the water could change the pace of a lap.”
Tahauri also highlighted some of the star players on the team including senior Kirsten Boyle, juniors Miki Matsumoto and Maegan Chow and freshman Scott Matsumoto, all of whom have displayed exemplary performance during the preseason, as well as recent meets.
“Our relays for both girls and boys are really strong. We’ve been doing a lot of drills and the team has been doing almost 55-60,000 yards [a week],” Coach Tahauri said. “I hope that we can score a lot of points in relay to win the league.”
The team’s upcoming schedule includes a home meet against Wilson on March 30 and a home meet against South Hills on April 13.
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