Rachel Mills
Review staff writer
The men’s swim team will kick off its 2008 season at its first meet, the Northwest Conference Sprint Pentathlon, Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 in Forest Grove, Ore. and 11-year head coach Gary Gutierrez has high hopes for the season.
“Our team will be better this year,” he said. “The level of our workouts is higher, the training is harder and the swimmers are still performing.”
Maintaining its third-place position may be difficult for a team that graduated several strong swimmers and high conference scorers, Gutierrez said. But he said freshmen swimmers Samuel Carter, Conor Colohan, Cooper Ashley and Marc Pereira will fill that void.
“[They] will help replace the points we lost,” Gutierrez said.
He said he doesn’t know if the team will improve upon its third-place position within the NWC, but he’s hoping to at least keep it.
“We may not place higher, but I think the team will be stronger,” he said.
Senior co-captain Josh Parfitt, who swims the freestyle and individual medley, said he sees a lot of potential in the freshmen swimmers.
“They really surprised me,” he said. “They are really motivated. They come to practice regularly, and they don’t complain about tough workouts or classes.”
Parfitt said the new swimmers seem mentally tough, and he said he thinks they will create a strong support core for the team this season.
Gutierrez said the team as a whole, led by co-captains Parfitt and junior Yusuke Kobayashi, will be stronger this year. He said the leadership from the two veteran swimmers has helped unify the team. The co-captains are the hardest workers on the team, and, he said, their hard work motivates the other swimmers.
“They lead by example,” he said. “When they tell the others to do something, it has a little more validity because they are already doing it.”
In addition, Gutierrez said specific individual swimmers will contribute greatly lot to the team.
“[Junior] Dominic Rieniets won three events at conference last year and broke the conference record in the 100-yard butterfly,” he said.
Gutierrez said he is expecting NCAA times from Rieniets again in both the butterfly and the freestyle, as well as high points from Kobayashi in the freestyle events and from Parfitt, the defending NWC champion in the 200 freestyle.
Parfitt complemented sophomore Tyler Huynh, who will compete in the breaststroke and freestyle, and he said Huynh is showing great improvement in practice. Another reliable competitor is junior Mark Carder, swimming the distance freestyle.
The team’s opening meet will be an opportunity for Gutierrez to gauge his team and evaluate its competitive level, as well as the reaction of the new swimmers toward competition at the collegiate level, he said.
Overall, Gutierrez said the meet is a fun one.
The swimmers will compete in 50-yard races today, but they will not earn points as in a typical meet; instead, judges use the scores to rank the swimmers.
“The swimmers can see how they stack up against the rest of the conference,” Gutierrez said.
On Nov. 1, swimmers will compete in various relays, both single-gender and co-ed events.
“This meet is a chance for freshmen to get used to competition, and for the rest of us to get back into the season,” Parfitt said.
Gutierrez said he is pleased with his team’s overall performance in workouts, and he is looking forward to a successful season.
“I think I’ve got a group of young people working hard,” he said. “I always tell them that good things happen to good people who do good work. I see this being lived out for the team right now.”