Have you been at the Ike pool deck before? Maybe in your first year of PE, you were able to go into the pool when the hotter part of the school year started to frolic and cool down. But did you notice the hanging towels and bags in the locker rooms you know aren’t yours? Maybe you’ve wondered what lies inside the lockers or who uses these rooms when school goes out. I’m happy to introduce to you the Eisenhower swimming team, fresh off the Arrowhead Athletic Conference (AAC) league finals.
Swim is a Co-Ed spring sport for Eisenhower, but practices to introduce beginner swimmers and shake the rust off returning swimmers usually start around winter generally after winter break. The goal and point of each swim game, dubbed meets, is to have more swimmers in higher places in each race, dubbed events, to collect points overall for a team. Although swimming can be seen as a team sport, there is a lot of individual tracking involved as league finals focus on the individual times of each swimmer and throughout the season, time can be tracked to enter swimmers into CIF tournaments.
Aquatics here at Eisenhower have 3 coaches. Julian, Darely, and Priscilla all have backgrounds in aquatics and work with the team to uplift each swimmer to their fullest potential as well as foster good team chemistry and sport-life balance. Although swim has had a steady stream of swimmers to form a team and develop for the past couple years, seniors, who make up most of the team, are departing the year of 2026. The focus overall for Eisenhower aquatics the school year 26-27 is to recruit and be able to develop more swimmers well into the next couple years.
Practice usually consists of warmup stretches, dryland workouts, then technique, endurance, and power swimming over the span of about 2 hours almost every day after school. Although that sounds daunting and very water-y, practice can oftentimes be also in the weight rooms around campus and the coaches will work with you and be flexible towards your schedule so even if you are participating in another sport, you can still make time to participate in meets and practices for the team.
Swimming as a sport consists of 4 main swimming strokes: Freestyle (Front Crawl), Backstroke, Breaststroke, and Butterfly. Distances in swim events are calculated and incremented from 25 yards (one side of the pool to the other) where the most common distance for swim events is 100 yards, so 4 laps of 25 yards. Each event is either designated a specific stroke with its specific rules, or as a “Medley”, where all 4 strokes are used: either as an individual medley of 1 swimmer using all 4 or a medley relay where 4 swimmers do different strokes.
Freestyle or front crawl is the most commonly known stroke, where swimmers alternate pulling and flutter kicking in a face down position, rotating the body for power, breathing to the side and “streamlining”, or staying in a position with least resistance to hydrodynamics by keeping oneself horizontal (though a small caveat is that in freestyle races, you can technically do any stroke as long as you stick to it.) Backstroke is the only swim stroke done face up, where swimmers recover with their arms straight in the air, then pull catching the water pinky-first then using both back rotation power and elbow bending to propel. Breaststroke is done using symmetrical, simultaneous strokes where the hands pull towards the chest then recover by putting the hands together and return to the starting position by chopping forwards, all while whipping their feet in a “frog kick”. Butterfly is known as the hardest stroke to swim, and is done by pulling both arms simultaneously and whipping the arms forward above the water at the same time as kicking both legs in a dolphin-like manner, fast second only to the front crawl.
The average Joe can benefit from joining the swim team (especially in the freshmen and sophomore years!) through the physical and mental rigor and development it brings you. Not only is actively swimming good for your body and health on par with running and lifting, its extremely accessible to people of all shapes, sizes, and conditions as being in the water eases the joints and is a great option for students with weak joints, or a heavier weight. Seeing that you can drop in time really motivates someone to continue working and honing their swim stroke, and being able to hang out with friends every day after school and take school days off to do something you love with people you like lead to an enjoyable and memorable swim experience! Personally, I loved being able to eat a big meal after practices and meets since swimming for so long helps you burn a ton of calories.
Our Eisenhower swim team participates in the Arrowhead Athletics Conference, separated in the Sunkist and San Andreas leagues. Playing in the San Andreas league, our boys this year won 6 different events in the league finals, besting swimmers in Grand Terrace, Carter, and San Gorgonio. Our girls this year won one event in the league finals, besting swimmers in Arroyo Valley, Grand Terrace, and Carter. A variety of league and non-league meets occur throughout the spring season, and at the end, all league wins are tallied to crown a league champion team. The league finals themselves are to award individual swimmers that are the fastest in their league for their respective events (the patches you see on the letterman jackets!) as many swim teams can have swimmers that are super fast, but short out on league champions because they dont have enough swimmers to rack up points. Our very own swimmer Dylan Martinez even qualified for CIF consideration this year through his amazing freestyle sprints at this year’s league finals.
I promise, once you start getting the hang of things, talk to the coaches about the sport and what’s expected of you, things really start clicking into place. Being able to start early and create a foundation that not only looks good on your resume/college applications but gets you in shape with people who can keep you accountable is an incredible privilege and something I recommend everyone to try at least once alongside water polo. If you are interested in participating in the Eisenhower swim or water polo team, check out their instagram page @ike.aquatics and look out for them to post their Remind for the 26-27 school year. Once you’ve joined the Remind or attended a sports information meeting, you can speak to the coaches individually who will all be extremely open and helpful for you to find your way. Thank you for reading, and I hope you can consider joining Eagles. It’s never too late, I started and finished as a Senior!
