Swim team shines at meet

By Alex Coba

Editor in Chief

Delta College's men's and women's swim and dive team hosted and competed in a meet against Modesto Junior College, College of the Sequoias and Merced College on March 1.

The Mustangs had to overcome harsh weather conditions as both rain and cold weather permeated throughout the competition. 

In the diving event, Delta had two of its competitors win events. 

Josh Hamby came in first place in both men's one-meter with a score of 216.45 and men's three-meter with a score of 251.175. 

"Today I felt like one meter I could have done a little better but for three meters I did kind of what I thought I'd do," said Hamby on his performance after the competition. 

Jessica Alexander Hurdueei took first place in women's one-meter dive with a score of 99.075. Hurdueei spoke on the harsh weather conditions.

"Some parts of the diving it helped me focus more I'm like this is bad weather you should really focus so you don't hurt yourself," said Hurdueei.

Jose Espinosa placed third with a score of 110.175.

Continuing on with the bad weather conditions, diving coach Robert Wimberly said changes to dives were due to weather conditions. 

"Depending on what we're doing we can change what dives we're doing, we did that with Josh and Jose, we had a couple of dives that were a little harder dives that we decided to tone down a bit to compensate for the bad weather and it worked out," he said.

On the swim half of the competition, men's and women's swim team won their events. 

Head Coach Mike Maroney remarked on the team performance. 

"We did great guys and girls won the meet so that's super. You know all team in the valley so it's a good win for us it a good day," he said.

Some of the standouts were Madeline Bachowski who placed first in the mile with a score of 18.51.11. This was Bachowski's first official race at Delta. 

James Berry placed first in all of the sprint races he competed in. 

In spite of his wins, Berry said he has a desire to improve. 

"I want to, in the 200, drop four seconds, and qualify for state," he said of his goals.

In addition, Berry shares a friendly wager with fellow teammate Joshua Monroe who Berry wishes to beat in the 100 events.  

Monroe, who also placed first in the backstroke event, comments on his performance. 

"I wanted to do better, I can't be too hard on myself cause, of course, the weather was terrible today, we've been training really hard, I'm like really broken down right now, but that's the point of this meet and tomorrow is to grind through it and set a strong marker and get faster from there," he said. 

The Delta College men's and women's swim and dive team will next compete in the Cuesta Invitational at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo March 9-10.