After Coach Gil’s retirement last year, Coach “Cos” Carmona took over as head coach of both varsity swim and dive programs, transitioning from modified. Despite the adjustments and challenges of a transitional year, Coach Carmona led the teams to success.

Challenges were evident going into the first varsity season in decades with a new coach running the show. For one thing, Carmona had surgery, which had him MIA during the beginning portions of the girls’ fall season. Still, new changes were implemented, as Carmona looked to gauge all swimmers.

“I thought we were able to ask all our swimmers, male and female, to step up… give everyone an opportunity to represent themselves by building upon their own skills,” Carmona said. In regard to the advantage of numbers in comparison to other teams on both the women’s and men’s sides, he added, “We showed how deep we were skill-wise across the board…If someone’s out, we can rely on someone else to fill in, while still giving us a competitive advantage.”

The jump from modified to varsity is no joke, whether it’s an athlete or, in this case, the coach. “There’s a lot more detail, a lot more pieces added on from the modified level to the varsity level,” Carmona said. He also praised the efforts from Coach Gil before him, as well as his assistant coaches, Eller and Fahey, for setting the stage for him to succeed. “Coach Gil did an amazing job showing me things and helping me out. Coach Eller and Coach Fahey really stepped up to contribute for additional tasks, communicating on SportsYou and running lanes during practices.”

The success of both teams during what was a transitional year shouldn’t be understated either. Carmona praises the team effort from the swimmers and divers on the men’s side as they won divisionals, as well as the women, who had individual and relay events in which they qualified and even placed in states.

“It shows we have a really amazing group of exciting swimmers ready to invest their time into this program, and if we continue to develop and grow it, I think we can see a bigger number of competitors in the upcoming year, and I’m excited about it,” Carmona said.