The swim team is often overlooked at Hollis Brookline High School. With all of the wrestling meets and basketball games that go on during the week, it can be easy to forget that HB has a swim team.

This year, the program had both a girls and a boys team. The team had a big turnout with a total of 29 swimmers and was led by seniors Cassandra Reijgers, Tess Meagher, Nicole Hall, Catherine Cotton, Sophia Bruzik, Sadie Solon, Cameron Jackson, and Brandon Fox.

At the state meet, which took place February 14th, head coach and Vice Principal, Bob Ouellette, was very happy with his team’s performance. “We did much better than I expected. I was extremely pleased with our performance at the state meet,” said Mr. Ouellette.

The swim team this year was a very young group with a total of nine freshman. With youth, comes inexperience as the team got off to a rocky start in the beginning of the season.

“For the first half of the season I felt like we could have worked harder. The beginning of January and mid February was when we really started to work hard and get down to business,” said Ouellette.

When asked what student/swimmer had stood out the most during the season, Ouellette responded, “ We had some very good performances out of seniors Nicole Hall and Cam Jackson. We also had some very surprising performances out of juniors Amit Eshed and Vivek Nithipalan.”

“We also had a school record broken by freshman Maya Ruvido in backstroke,” Ruvido ’19, first year swimmer at HB, is already showing great signs of success. With still three more years left in the program, Mr. Ouellette has high hopes for her in the upcoming years.

The team is set up to have much success next year. Although they will be losing nine of their most experienced swimmers to college, the team next year is set up to be led by seven seniors.

They will be even more successful in the upcoming years when the nine freshman get experience in the pool. The future only looks bright for the young but talented swim team.