Both of Palo Alto High School’s varsity boys and girls swim teams had swimmers qualify for the Central Coast Section competition this season, sending a total of 22 swimmers to the CCS swimming competition. The CCS swimming event, which was held this year from May 11th to May 12th, is one of the last swimming events that the Paly swim team participates in.

After both the boys and girls swim teams placed first in the Santa Clara Valley league standings, the teams turned their attention to the CCS swimming competition. The CCS swimming competition was held in Santa Clara this year, with over 40 teams participating in the event. Events at CCS include individual events for boys and girls such as the 100-yard butterfly, freestyle, breaststroke, and backstroke. CCS also has longer events like the 200-yard freestyle and medley, as well as a 500-yard freestyle event.

Sophomore Thomas Galetti, one of the swimmers from Paly that qualified for the competition, credits the progress he made to his coaches’ repetitive but effective training techniques.

“I attribute my success with our coach Danny Dye, my club coach and the Paly guys,” Galetti said. “My club coach has given me a solid basis through four years of swimming by getting my technique right. I also attribute it to Danny for giving us insanely long and stupid sets, but it worked. He also believed in my ability to make CCS from week one. The Paly guys were always there, pushing each other, cheering me on at league prelims when I got my CCS cut.”

Chesnie Cheung, a sophomore varsity girls swim team member, also qualified for CCS. She said that she didn’t believe her performance in the competition was very poor, but did not do as well as she thought she could have.

“I would say that I didn’t do too bad, but I also didn’t do amazing.” Cheung said, “I slipped pretty badly on both of my individual events but for my relays, I swam pretty well, and we placed 4th and 7th.”

The Central Coast Section is one of 10 sections that make up the California Interscholastic Federation. The CIF is an organization that manages a league that over 1,570 high schools across California participate in. Over 770,000 student-athletes participate annually in CIF events in 29 different sports.

Apart from ending the season with many swimmers qualifying for CCS, the relationship among teammates developed throughout the season, according to coach Danny Dye.

“We had a great season,” Dye said. “What I think went well this season was the amazing commitment from the swimmers and the friendships they formed between each one another. Of course, we hope to continue to our swimmers qualify for CCS in the coming years.”