By Jonah Rosenbaum

After the girls’ swimming team took first place in the Mission League and the boys took second, nine swimmers advanced to the Division 1 CIF meet.

Allison Merz ’10, Shanshan Heh ’12, Catherine Wang ’11, Alexandra Edel ’10, James McNamara ’10, Danny Fujinaka ’10, Sam Ruddy ’11, Mitchell Oei ’11 and Russell Madison ’10 all competed in the invitational meet which took place in Belmont Shores.

The boys’ 400 free relay finished fourth and James McNamara finished fifth in the 100 yard butterfly with a time of 50.86 seconds.

“CIF was a great finish for us. We had a really strong season, and we finished particularly strong towards the end of the year. Everyone performed well all year and we had a lot of CIF qualifiers,” Allison Merz ’10 said.

“Once we got to CIF everyone was swimming their best and it was really impressive how many girls advanced to the finals. (In swimming, the top 16 swimmers or relay teams advance to the finals). We are a relatively small school competing in division one, but we were able to hold our own,” Merz said.

Merz attributed the team’s success to consistent hard work in practice, which led to measured improvement as the season progressed.

“We are a very different team now then we were at the start of the season,” Merz said.

The boys’ team felt that they finished their season on a high note as well, finishing second only to nationally ranked Loyola.

“We did really well in league. We finished second behind Loyola which is one of the best teams in the country,” Fujinaka said.

“We all worked really hard all season and as a result we always performed our best. CIF was great because I feel like we got the best performance possible from every person on our team. I was happy with how I did individually and our relay team (Fujinaka ’10, Ruddy, McNamara and Madison) finished 4th. It was a great way to end our senior season and I’m happy with how things ended,” Fujinaka said.