The Dalles High Riverhawks swim team started practice Nov. 14 at the Gorge Athletic Club in The Dalles with 15 swimmers on the boys and girls squads.
The Riverhawk swimmers, guided by head Coach Shea Macnab and assistant coach Nate Timmons, start a 13-event schedule Dec. 9 with a meet at Scappoose High School. They’ll follow with back-to-back meets as they’ll also compete in the Dec. 10 Lions Invitational meet in the Eisenschmidt Pool in St. Helens.
The season culminates with the OSAA Class 4A state swim meet Feb. 17-18 at the Tualatin Hills Aquatic Center in Beaverton.
“There’s going to be some new faces on our relay teams this year, because we lost some kids who graduated that were on both the boys and girls state qualifying relay teams last year,” said Timmons. “We’re just not really sure who those other swimmers will be yet though.”
The Riverhawk seniors who helped the girls squad qualify for state in the 200-yard medley relay last year included Kendall Webber and Hannah Haight.
Also back for the Riverhawks are returning Class 5A boys state qualifiers Michael Cole, Skyler Coburn and Carter Randall, and girls 5A state qualifiers Kennedy Abbas and Lydia DiGennaro.
DiGennaro helped the Riverhawks qualify for the relay, and she also qualified individually, as well, in the 50-yard freestyle. DiGennaro took fourth place at state last year with a 50 free time of 25.32 seconds. Reta Rincon is expected to provide the Riverhawks girls squad with some key contributions, too, as she’ll probably be a member of the relay team. The five returning state qualifiers are all seniors except for Randall, who is a junior.
The Dalles senior Manatu Crichton-Tunai is also on the boys team for the first time ever. Randall, Coburn, and Cole combined to help the Riverhawks qualify in both the 200 and 400 freestyle relays last year.
“Practices have been really good so far this year and we’ve had an awesome start,” said Timmons. “They’ve all been working really hard, and we’ve been giving them some good workouts. We have some freshmen swimmers who we hope we can get them entered in some meets at some point of the season. Manatu is doing a pretty good job in his first year and hopefully he’ll improve and swim well in all our meets. We have some pretty good swimmers, so I’m pretty excited about the season.”
The Riverhawks moved down to Class 4A this school year and are in swimming’s 13-member Special District 1, which includes Class 1A through 4A schools. The Class 4A/3A/2A/1A District Meet is Feb. 10-11 at La Grande.
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