As the swim season begins, the Saints faced the Bonita Bearcats at their home pool for a meet on March 12. Following the loss of many strong swimmers and former Head Coach Danny Feola, the Saint swimmers fought to repair the holes to get a positive start of the season.

As Coach Feola stepped down this season, Paul Vincent Pignotti, former Junior Varsity swim coach stepped up in that role as the new head captain. Since Coach Feola bagged more than ten years as San Dimas’s swim coach, Coach PV had a big shoes to fill, but he stepped up to the challenge and faced it headstrong. “Plenty of things can go wrong, but the real challenge has been keeping the same strength-based mindset in midst of everything that piled on” Coach PV said. To battle this, he tries to focus on what he can work with, rather the things going wrong in the situation.

The day of the rival meet, the swimmers were faced with a challenge. “Leading up to the Bonita meet, I thought the season had been going pretty well all things considered,” Coach PV said. “We had a slew of setbacks with our pool being closed for a time before the meet, but I took comfort in seeing our athletes’ hard work” Coach PV said as reflecting on setbacks he has encountered so far this season. The Saints pool was closed for a week before, and had no place to practice before the meet, but still came out as strong as ever.

Bonita is known for their competitive sports, and San Dimas has always put up a good competition when going up against them. Last year, the boys were unsuccessful and fell short from the score, but the girls fought hard and beat the Bearcats by five points. Therefore, coming into this meet the Saints aimed to put their best foot forward, even if they were at a disadvantage. The Saints came several girls placing first such as Senior Faith Kearns in the 100 breaststroke and Junior Carla Armale in the 50 free — both girls who are currently ranked first in the league. As the meet progressed, the Saints fought strong, but came shorthanded. The girls lost by 30 points while the boys lost by a landslide of 80. The meet was not seen as a loss, but a reflection of how hard the Saints work, even in tough situations. Even though two losses were at hand, many people gained personal bests, and won events that they didn’t think possible. As Coach PV said, he is “very proud of this group of athletes for coming together and getting through the early challenges.”