The swim and dive season has begun and both our men’s and women’s teams are currently undefeated.  Our swim team has been very successful in past years and this year is certainly turning out to be more of the same.  Since the start of December, the rams swim and dive teams have been dominating the likes several schools including Chantilly, Herndon and Oakton.  Though it is obviously a team effort and very dependent on everyone’s performance, there are always some standouts that rise above what is expected of them.  In the 2012-2013 season, sophomore James Murphy even set a record for the 200 yard freestyle of 1:39.16, which is an All American Automatic (AAA) time for that event.  The young age of some of our team’s top performing swimmers is promising due to the fact that we can only get better from here.

The captains of the girl’s swim and dive team are Brittany Henry, Meaghan LeRoy, Lia Meinstein, Mackenzie Schuler, Kelsey Koo and Sarah Gross.  The boy’s team captains are Andrew Goetzinger, Michael Canty, Matt Jones, JP Boland and Matthew Honnold.  Swim team captain Matt Honnold explains the teams’ progress and expectations so far; “Last year we won the State title, but we didn’t go undefeated, and we didn’t win Districts.  So going into this season, those were our initial goals.  We succeeded in going undefeated, and beat our rival Oakton twice.  We’re optimistic about our chances at Districts, Regionals, and States, but we’re taking it one meet at a time.  Being a captain involves getting everyone ready to swim fast, and doing whatever it takes to lead the team to a win.”  There is one more regular season meet, and then they will transition into district meets. No matter what the outcome of the meet, we have a very good standing going into districts.  We are looking to win states this year as our team is clearly a force to be reckoned with.

The high school swim and dive teams are structured so that each meet consists of both swim scores and dive schools, and the teams are separated by gender. The teams consist of students from 9^th to 12^th grade, so there is no separation of Junior Varsity and Varsity.  The Northern Virginia area has always been a prime area for swim and dive and the fact that our school is able to perform so well against other schools in the area is very impressive.