Dive Into The Exciting World Of The Golden Valley Swim Team!

Byline photo of Sophia Walker
Sophia Walker, Staff Writer, Sports News
April 16, 2024
Golden Valley Swim team starting at their first meet of the year
Golden Valley Swim team starting at their first meet of the year
Noa Prothais

Dive Into The Exciting World Of The Golden Valley Swim Team

A new year, a new season, and new opportunities are here and ready for this year’s Golden Valley Grizzly Swimmers. This Golden Valley swim team is not like normal teams. These interdependent athletes are treated all equally and like a family. Every day after school the team travels down the hill to the aquatic center to practice for their very first meet. This upcoming season we will see these varsity teams excel to their full potential.

A swimmer from Golden Valley starting her dive for the relay (Noa Prothais)

Two wonderful varsity captains, Clarie Pagaran and Joseph Khouri, have transitioned from a small team with no coach, into a growing team. Putting their all into every practice being led by Coach Mel, and all the people who help out with the team constantly contribute to this family, leading them closer and closer to success. This will be an exciting season with many seniors leading the team.

After speaking with one of the senior captains, Joseph, he shared “My favorite thing about this swim team has to be how close everyone is to each other. We treat each other like family and that is very important to me. I’m extremely thankful to lead a great team like this.” What was received most from visiting this team, is that they grow together, and support one another more than other dependent sports do.

A swimmer at Golden Valley racing against other swimmers from is team (Noa Prothais)

Most people underestimate these kinds of athletes, but need to learn about it more when the average high school swimmer swims one million strokes per season according to Swimming World. It’s been proved swimming is also a very competitive and strategic sport where you’re constantly working out your entire body. A favored plus about swimming is you don’t get bothered by sweat, and you’re constantly able to cool down.

When asking about the graduating students, no one seemed to be too worried. “I think the swim team will do great even though the seniors are leaving. We have some amazing underclassmen who work extremely hard to improve and are capable of being great leaders for our future grizzly swimmers”, said Khouri.

A swimmer from Golden Valley preparing their dive (Noa Prothais)

Claire Pagaran was very excited to talk about the swim team, sharing, “I’m very sad to leave in a couple of months not being able to captain anymore, especially after spending all four years on this team, and growing with them I’ll miss the team and coaches tremendously.” Hearing this, it seems future Grizzly swimmers will be in good hands.

The team has high expectations for this season. We wish them the best of luck from The Grizzly Gazette 2024 class and will support them along the way. Hopefully learning more about the dedication and help po0tentain of the golden valley swim team can help swim get more supporters for this season and other ones to come.
About the Contributors
Sophia Walker
Sophia Walker, Staff Writer
Sophia Walker is a Staff Writer  for the Sports New Team on the Grizzly Gazette and she is in her last year of highschool. She's very passionate about writing about campus activities, student spotlight stories and community issues because she wants to be involved with everything that is happening and to be able to share what needs to be shared which is very important to her. Being a part of the Grizzly Gazette to her is extremely important because there is so much that is going on and all people need to be educated with everything in the world and our community which is very diverse and different. She loves journaling, writing their thoughts and making poems with what happens to make her feel better and researching common things going on to learn more. She also loves helping people and leading them in any way she can, she strives to help and understand anyone. She has had many hobbies including hockey, dance, tennis, volleyball, and acting. Eventually I would love to be a therapist or counselor for families, relationships, and or with any people in need of help or support. 
Noa Prothais
Noa Prothais, Staff Writer
Noa Prothais is in 10th grade, she is bilingual in French and english. She is a staff writer on the Sports News Team for the Grizzly Gazette. Outside of school work Noa is part of the XC and Track team, and after school she does ballet. She's on varsity for both Track and XC and has been doing ballet for almost 9-10 years. After only doing track for a few months last year she went to CIF. Being an athlete she’s very passionate about writing sports so that she can hopefully share the journey of individual teams or student athlete, she wants to be able to share about personal records and team environment to encourage the respect and time it takes to commit to a sport, she’d also like to write about student spotlight stories or CEPAT, because it involves more than one topic. She really wants to be part of the grizzly gazette to learn more about this profession to hopefully pursue this in the future. She loves writing, running, and dancing, occasionally drawing.

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