On Friday, February 11, COS Aquatics held their first home meet of the 2022 season, which ended in a sweeping victory for the Giants. The other teams present were Shasta College, Clovis Community College, and Fresno City College, and all three lost to COS.

Helped by the fact that COS has a very large number of competitors, especially compared to the other teams present that day, our aquatics team has a very good shot at doing very well this year.

Quantity though, does not exclude the quality of our swimmers.

Two athletes, Connor Bruton (50m Breaststroke) and Sofia Mora (50m Backstroke) both set school records, as well as the men’s 200m medley relay coming just.6 tenths off of a school record, of which Connor Bruton also played a part in.

For his record, Connor finished the 50m breaststroke in just 28.02 seconds, which beat the previous record set just last year by Caleb Peltzer, with a time of 28.83 seconds.

“The dedication really helped me get it, knowing the guy who held the record before, that friendly competition, really made me want to break that record, which I did” (Connor Bruton)

Sofia Moria swam the 50 backstroke in 30.41 seconds, which broke a record that stood for over 20 years set by Melanie Beach with a time of 31.58 seconds.

Breaking records wasn’t the only thing that our team was busy with, as they were also occupied with destroying the other teams in attendance.

Joshy Peters won the 200 IM with a time of 2:03.07, Zachary Welch finished first in the 100 free with a time of 48.16 seconds, and for the women, Jillian Lambert got first in the 50m Free with 25.37 seconds and the 100 free at 57.21 seconds, along with Eva Mcilwaine getting first in the 100m breaststroke.

Head Coach Allyson Briano acknowledged the success of her team, attributing it to several factors.

“We are lucky to still have one of the largest teams in our conference, we have a lot of talent who will be able to win conference individual titles, and we also have quite a few athletes who are newer to the sport who are improving by leaps and bounds and show great promise. I anticipate more team records being broken this year.”

COS won the event by over 100 points, absolutely destroying the competition and setting themselves up in a very good position for their coming meet on Friday, the 18th of February where they will be hosting Merced and Fresno.

Admission is free, so make sure to come out and support COS aquatics, as well as all other COS Athletics!