On October 30th and November 1st, several members of the Bronxville-Tuckahoe Girls Varsity Swim Team competed at the Section One Championships. Finalists and State qualifiers included Julia Bazinet (8th Grade), Ellie Dessart (Junior), Alisa Fominykh (Senior), Keala Schubert (8th Grade), and Tuckahoe student Emily Gjertsen (Junior). After fantastic swims at prelims, the girls continued to excel at finals, where they made school history. The 400 freestyle relay (Dessart, Bazinet, Fominykh, Gjertsen) placed 5th with a time of 3:37.27, shaving 5.9 seconds off from their seedtime and breaking the 2005 school record of 3:39.67. The 200 freestyle relay (Dessart, Schubert, Gjertsen, Fominykh) placed third at finals and made the podium with a time of 1:39.59, a 3.2-second improvement from their seed. This relay also broke a 2005 school record, which was previously 1:40.25. The five girls leave for the NYSPHSAA Girls Swimming State Championships held in Ithaca on Thursday, November 15th, and will compete into the weekend.

Input from Ellie:

Practicing and competing with these girls the past few months has been incredible. It’s unfortunate that swimming is such an underrated sport because the members of this teamwork so unbelievably hard and push themselves to do the unthinkable. Swimming is tough mentally and physically because you’re forcing your body to go against these forces resisting you while trying to drop time simultaneously. It’s a sport where every millisecond counts. Every breath. Every turn. Even the slightest slip off the block can mess you up. With so much pressure going into each race, it’s difficult to stay focused mentally, keep a calm mindset, and trust your training. As soon as the last person in each relay finished into the wall and our times popped up on the board, we all knew the draining practices and hard work paid off. It was a huge feeling of pride and accomplishment placing highly for our school, not to mention the excitement of breaking two school records; the girls deserved every bit of it. We had a great season this year (6-2 record) with close races and a big win against Ursuline for the first time in 14 years. I’ve only been here for a few months, but the developing strength of our team is evident. I can’t wait to see how the five of us do at States next week… maybe we’ll break our own records!