The Palo Alto High School boys’ swim team is training strenuously to claim its sixth consecutive Santa Clara Valley Athletic League title.
“Our major goal this year is to win leagues, which will be a big challenge,” sophomore and underclassman team captain Byron Sanborn said. “If we do, it will be the most times in a row that we’ve ever won leagues.”
While the absence of key seniors who graduated in 2008 swimmers will make winning leagues more difficult, this will not discourage the team.
“We lost our two best swimmers, Mark Higgins and Tim Wenzlau, who each scored piles of points for us, but we can still be a good team and pull it [winning SCVALs] off,” Sanborn said.
With graduated seniors having cleared from the waters, many young and new faces fill the pool deck. This year, underclassmen fill the majority of the varsity roster.
“We have a lot of underclassmen; Byron Sanborn and “sophomore” Rollin Lau are going to be really important for us to win leagues,” senior team captain Bobby Abbott said.
Head coach Danny Dye also holds high hopes and looks for improvement in the team after it finished seventh last year in the Central Coast Section Championship.
“I want them to win leagues and I want them to be in the top five in CCS,” Dye said.
However, for the young team to achieve this goal, Dye expressed that the Vikings will have to stay focused and dedicated to working harder.
Abbott shares Dye’s confidence in the team’s ability to succeed through proper training.
“As long as we do the yardage, around 50,000 yards a week, by the end of the season we should be able to win leagues and do well in CCS,” Abbott said.
Returning swimmers noticed the increase in practice intensity compared to last year.
“I definitely noticed a big step up,” Sanborn said. “This early in the season last year, practice seemed easier than it is now, but by the end of the season, practices will get much more intense.”
Already, rewarding results in the boys’ performance at their two first non-league meets reflect the hard training. In the team’s first tri-meet, the boys scored 191 points, leaving Los Altos High School and Menlo School trailing behind. The team also managed to place third behind Los Gatos High School and Monta Vista High School in the Palo Alto High School Invitational despite the absence of many key swimmers due to a club meet conflict.
“I was happy with their performance, it’s a very young team and they did well in the meet,” Dye said. “I am very encouraged.”
The boys will have their first league meet against their biggest threat in the race for league titles, Los Gatos, at 3:30 p.m. on Friday at Paly.