On Friday and Saturday, the Concorde District Swimming preliminaries and finals were hosted at Oak Marr Recreation Center. The school’s Varsity Swim & Dive team competed against Oakton High School, Centreville High School, Herndon High School, Westfield High School and Robinson Secondary School.

The Concorde District tournament was a great occasion for team members to see their peers from other schools.

“It was really fun because we all cheered together and I got to hang out with some of my friends who swim for other schools who I don’t  see very often,” sophomore Prudence Aquiatan said.

The team has been practicing since the start of the season to prepare for this competition.

“The coaches made practices hard when they wanted to prepare us to swim against faster teams,” sophomore Grace Boland said. “They made us practice a lot of sprints. Also, we would work on kicking, breath control, and stroke. Normally, we swam in sets with intervals we had to make every time, which challenged us.”

All the hard work paid off when both teams, boys and girls, got 3rd place in the conference, just behind Robinson and Oakton.

“I think the biggest aid to our success was that everyone came together and supported each other,” head coach and emotional disabilities teacher Peter McDonough said. “We knew that the first and second place was out of reach for us, so we instead challenged ourselves to win 3rd place and to take as many points away from the teams above us as possible.”

Besides finishing 3rd place, two team members broke the district’s records. Junior Dennis Lai broke the Conference record in the 200-meter individual medley and sophomore Jacquee Clabeaux broke the 100-meter breaststroke record. Lai also finished 1st place in 100-meter breaststroke while Clabeaux finished 2nd place in 100-meter freestyle and 1st place in 100-meter breaststroke .

“It was a burst of excited jubilance every second that one occupies the pool deck,” sophomore Matthew Dasher said. “I was on my feet cheering for my teammates like a ton of minutes.”

In addition, the team finished 1st place in Girls 200-meter medley relay, 3rd place in Girls 200-meter free relay, 3rd place in Boys 200-meter free relay and 2nd place in Boys 400-meter free relay. Junior Ryan Allain finished 3rd place in 200-meter freestyle. Sophomore Lea Gwennap finished 1st place in 100 backstroke and 1st place in 200-meter individual medley. Senior Shannon Darroch finished 3rd place in 100-meter butterfly.

Region Individual Event Qualifiers
Ryan Allain
Dennis Lai
Andres Alarcon
Alex Strait
John MacDonald
Fletcher Madsen
Marcelo Coray
Jake Weeren
Chandler Derbyshire
Michael Mullins
Lauren Hensley
Jacquee Clabeaux
Lea Gwennap
Christina Peters
Corinne Kominski
Shannon Darroch