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This season of swimmers from PCC’s swim team are recognized for bringing home 13th place at the State Championship as well as breaking alumni records that have been recognized in PCC’s sports Hall of Fame.

As this season comes to a close, the most memorable highlights are shared as the swim team says farewell to a few swimmers.

Coach Stoddard is proud of the leadership from Samuel Jo as well as the effort Sydney Odent, Ryan Wang, and Roman Rostomyan put into their events at state. Odent beat a 39 year old record in the 200 IM however, Wang broke Odent’s record by a minute leaving him to win a fifth place medal. Both Odent and Wang broke alumni Cario Liu’s 400 IM. Freshman Roman Rostomyan came in fourth in the 100 fly event, breaking a 40 year old record that was set by one of PCC’s Hall of Fame athletes, Eric Marks.

Melissa Cienega, who is transferring to Cal Baptist University, won her 4th state title at State Championships and said she would not have been able to do it without the motivation of her teammates pushing her every step of the way.

“This state champs was different from last year’s because this year I went into it as the top seed in all three of my events,” said Cienega. “I definitely tried not to think about it that much and just focused on training hard and getting the work done.”

Two major highlights for Cienega was winning the 500 and 200 free at state. One of the few things she’ll miss the most is her teammates, as well as coaches Terry Stoddard and Andrew Barrman. She gives credit to coach Stoddard and coach Barrman for helping her get to where she is today and being given the opportunity to train under their wing.

“I made lifelong friends here and I’ll miss all of them,” she said.

For her next season at Cal Baptist University, Cienega is looking forward to what awaits in her swim career and looks for positivity in being the best swimmer she can be.

Samuel Jo, who will be also be transferring, won his event in the 100 backstroke as well as placing 2nd in his 200 backstroke at state.  

“I would have to say winning the 100 back was one of my best highlights because I had trained so much and accomplished much of my goals,” Jo said.

Speaking of goals, Jo said coming in 3rd in the 400 freestyle relay was also a highlight because the team had no idea what place they would come in. They focused on going out there and putting their hearts into their final race.

“We really came together and made a very tight team,” he said. “We accomplished many things such as coming in 6th at state and being in the top three in some of the relays.”

Jocelyn Jo is also leaving and looks back on her highlighted moment when she dropped her time back to 1.07 in her 100 breaststroke event.

“I’m going to miss the environment and how everyone was funny, positive and motivated,” she said.

Stoddard mentioned that Odent beating Eric Marks record from 1978, is impressive to see down the line of generation of alumni swimmers at PCC.

When Stoddard spoke of the teams accomplishments he said he’s fortunate to have swimmers accomplish their goals especially at state. As well as the swim team did this season, coach Stoddard plans to keep practices going to be one hundred percent in the zone for next season.

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