The Piedmont High School swimming team is starting their season with strong returning swimmers, a new pool opening in April, and a new head coach.
While it may be her first season with Piedmont, coach Elizabeth Dally has had experience with different programs.
“I swam at De Anza College,” Dally said. “I was the head coach for Lynbrook High School for a season, then I worked at De Anza Cupertino Aquatics for four years, and I’m in my first season at Piedmont swim team right now, which is a local club team.”
Dally said she is eager to work with a new group of swimmers.
“I’m excited about this year. We have a lot of really fast swimmers,” Dally said. “We also have a bunch of swimmers with very little experience swimming, so it’s kind of a good mix.”
There are a few swimmers with a solid shot of going to the California Interscholastic Federation championships.
“Nik Costello and Ryan Mak have a really good chance of making it to state this year,” Dally said. “Nik would be for, I believe, the 50 (yard freestyle), and then Ryan would be the 500 (freestyle).”
Besides Costello and Mak, the team has multiple other strong swimmers.
“I believe Connor Carnazzo has a pretty good butterfly,” Dally said. “His brother, Cole Carnazzo, is a great breaststroker, and Asher Takazawa is very fast.”
While there are some highly developed swimmers, Dally said she is excited to develop the newer swimmers.
“We have two pretty inexperienced swimmers. Their names are Fred (Leonard) and Evie (Luskin),” Dally said. “I’m really excited to see them grow as the season progresses. Both of them have very little swimming experience and are just learning all four strokes. That’s been fun for me to try and teach them the strokes and see how they’ve grown a lot already.”
Costello said that while the West Alameda County Conference doesn’t present much competition, other teams outside of the league are tougher competitors.
“The only real good team besides us in WACC is Berkeley. Being a big school, they have a lot of kids on the team,” Costello said. “Outside of WACC, through the tunnel schools like De La Salle, Northgate, and Foothill are gonna be
pretty hard.”
Dally said that she chose her team captains based on the uplifting leadership she has already seen within the Highlanders.
“Samantha White, Brooke Patchen, Asher Takazawa, and Cole Carnazzo are the captains. I’ve seen three of the four of them in the Piedmont swim team show great leadership already,” Dally said.
Dally said she prepares her swimmers for meets by boosting their confidence.
“It can be really scary to get up on the block and compete,” Dally said. “I like to really focus on their strong points and try not to stress them out too much about going fast. I know they’ll perform to the best of their abilities, and I think the best way to do that is just to hype them up.”
The team has its first meet against San Leandro on March 6, followed by the De La Salle Invitational March 13-14.