This year, Archer’s Swim Team has progressed leaps and bounds, or perhaps more fittingly, dives and turns!

Archer Swim is officially in its fourth year, and as one of Archer’s youngest athletic teams, both the Junior Varsity and Varsity teams have proved their prowess in the pool. The JV and Varsity Teams are comprised of over thirty girls under the superb direction of coaches Stephanie Ferri and Caitlin Lawson; they practice at the nearby UCLA North Pool every day after school. So far, the girls’ unrelenting tenacity to perfect every dive, stroke, and flipturn has paid off.

Archer’s JV team has quite simply dominated almost every other team in the Delphic League—the girls have outswam their competitors from Brentwood, Crossroads, Milken, New Community Jewish High School, and Buckley! The Varsity team has vastly improved from previous years too, with quite a few ex-club swimmers and ex-club water polo players joining the varsity returnees.

One significant highlight from this season is that four girls (Christina Bauer, Victoria Chen, AnnMarie Dominguez, and Kate Heck) swam their way into the California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) Championships as Archer’s first CIF relay team! They will compete in Riverside mid-May, battling some of the best swimmers throughout Southern California in the 400 Freestyle Relay.

The CIF relay qualification proves how much the Varsity Swim Team here at Archer has grown. Individual swimmers qualified for CIF in the past, but now with more strong swimmers roughing out the high-caliber training an entire relay team has qualified.

The Varsity team as a whole has shown amazing personal bests and improved techniques. As they look forward to next year, we can only ask, “Who said panthers can’t swim?” Because Archer Panthers clearly can.