Irvington Swimming ended the season triumphantly. The last tournament open for both JV and Varsity was the MVAL championships. The team placed between 3rd-5th for most of the events. For 2 events, they placed even higher. At NCS, three varsity swimmers had individual events. And throughout the season, many swimmers beat their previous personal record times.

They had a lot of meets throughout the season which included American, Newark Memorial, Mission, and Moreau.

Varsity swimmer Will Peng (10) says, “We did O.K. on most of these {meets} except for the Mission meet. The Mission team is exceptionally good.”

Over the years, the team lost seniors that were an integral part of the team’s success.

“That probably affected our team’s performance in terms of competing with other schools. We weren’t at our best overall, but our Boy’s Varsity is still as strong as ever,” said Team Captain Mia Lam (11). Boy’s Varsity made NCS finals for their relays, which was one of the biggest accomplishments this season.

Peng and Lam both noted that their team morale needed some improvement. Other teams would cheer for everyone on the team, rather than just their friends, which probably improved the team’s overall performance.

“Sometimes people are pretty critical about other people’s swimming,” Peng said.

The team faced some unexpected difficulties this season as the Irvington pool broke down several times this year. The meets were then pushed to other weeks that already contained dual meets with American and Kennedy, so there were 4 meets in two weeks.

Lam said, “Meets are absolutely tiring. I was exhausted by the second meet of the week and couldn’t do as well as I wanted to.”

The pool took around 3 weeks to fix, as it takes a long time to order the right parts from the district.

For next year, Lam hopes to have more bonding events within the team to get to know the new swimmers and bring down the “veil” between the JV and Varsity swimmers.

Despite the team not being the best this year, Lam noticed that the swimmers devoted a lot of their time to improve their scores.

“That is all that matters in our coach’s eyes, so it’s a win for everyone,” said Lam.