The Cosumnes River College women’s swim team is starting its third season this year. The team consists of nine women of different ages and skill levels.

The team has a lot to look forward to this year as a team of just nine. Head Coach Liz Abrams said that the team is ready for the upcoming season and is excited to develop an established program.

“This season the women’s aquatic program is still in a building phase,” Abrams said. “This is our third season here on campus. That would be a long-term goal of ours, developing a team culture that promotes the school’s values, a good work ethic and really establishing a good base for swimming with these girls and looking towards the future.”

The team has had one meet so far – the NorCal relays in Santa Rosa. The meet consisted of relays, so no individual races were swam.

“It was a very fun meet for all the teams to get together,” Abrams said. “They did really great swimming together as a group for the first time. They have some awesome team chemistry.”

The team has nine swimmers, so many races come up quick because the team is so small. The team consists of swimmers who are using this semester to get back into swimming, and swimmers who have been training in past years. Total swimming in meets are the five girls that are trained and ready to swim this season. The other four swimmers are practicing this season in hopes of swimming competitively next season.

Lorena Rettele is a freshman at CRC and said she hopes to get better times in general this season.

“We did pretty good for getting the first times for only having five people swimming this season. The people who swam in the relays did really good, and they could definitely get better. The start times were really good too,” said Rettele on the first meet.

“For the girls who are freshmen, it will probably be an adjustment period for them to get used to the idea of racing multiple races back to back, but that’s what we’re working on in practice everyday – endurance and that mental strength and mental capacity to be ready to go for each race,” Abrams said. “Typically, depending on what meet you’re swimming at there’s caps on how many an individual can swim individually and in relays. For example, in our Los Rios Invite, they’re allowed to swim three individuals and three relays.”

The team is still starting the season up, so no records have been made yet. “As the season moves forward, we’ll have a lot of personal records, and it’s likely we might have Lorena Retelle beat our team’s 500m record this year,” said Abrams.

“I think this season I’m gonna practice more and get prepared for next semester. I feel like I’ve been improving as I’ve been practicing more and more. Before, I wasn’t able to swim long distances, but now I’m able to swim 100s in freestyle,” said Carrie Chen, a returning swimmer.

“I have much more fun swimming in college than I did in high school. I can learn more, and people are a lot more willing to help me, especially coach – she’s really helpful. I also feel like this team is a family, it’s not just a team, it’s a family,” said Chen.

The team’s chemistry was one of the most common topics brought up by the team. Retelle said “We’re pretty much like a big family. Because it’s so small, we all bonded really fast,”

The team’s next meet will be at Cuesta College from Mar. 9-11. Coach Adams said Cuesta is a very fun and quick meet.