Boys swim sank the notoriously skilled San Marcos Knights 112-70, while girls lost 115-65, March 27. According to captain Kai Snyder (12), the boys win was big for the team since San Marcos’s high demographic of club swimmers made them a remarkable DI force. Due to San Marcos’s reputation, Snyder said it was important for Westview to adopt a winning mindset going into the meet.
“[Since] my freshman year, San Marcos has been one of those teams that rolls in and you’re kind of dreading it because you’re thinking, ‘How am I going to talk to my team after we lose?’” he said. “This year, instead of thinking about how I’m going to console my team, I [thought], ‘How do I want to celebrate winning?’ so we decided to hit it as hard as we could.”
Along with this determination, Snyder attributes the team’s persistent performance to their experience in past, less successful years.
“What makes Westview so good is that we have this really fun energy that we got from being on the bottom, but then we’re finally at the top,” Snyder said. “A lot of our faster swimmers are goofy and fun and carefree — it’s not cut-throat.”
He said this attitude helped carry them to the win.
“I think that keeping up the good vibes from the previous wins was the best thing [we did to prepare],” Snyder said. “Everyone’s going to put in their own dedication to training, [but] just constantly checking in with them — that’s what I love doing, hyping people up, [and] that’s what we did to prepare. It’s what we do all the time.”
According to backstroke swimmer Ethan Ferreira (11), the team strategized to maximize the points they earned in each event.
“The general strategy is to take first place and then third place if possible [in each event], or second and third, and then [the team is overall] up in points,” Ferreira said. “Our lineup has shifted around constantly this year to stack our relays so that we’re earning more points per swimmer than [the other teams] are, and so far that’s been working really well.”
Breaststroke swimmer Yuchen Wang (10) said that the team reworked its strategies before the meet.
“We needed a [new] relay [lineup] for each CIF event,” he said. “We were trying to stack the 200 medley and 400 freestyle relay and were trying to make a better 200 freestyle relay team for CIFs and try that [during the meet].”
Snyder said that persevering with these last-minute changes made the San Marcos win even more meaningful.
“I think that [beating] San Marcos was a continuation of [the] idea that a good mindset at a rough time can still mean the difference between a win and a loss,” Snyder said.
According to Wang, the win has made the team aim to finish the season as strongly as they started it.
“We’re excited about the rest of the season, being undefeated right now, and we are excited to keep the streak going,” Wang sajd. “Our hope this season is to raise our team and win boys leagues for the second year in a row.”
