There was a bit of a landmark set this spring at Cosumnes River
College when the women’s swim team won its first home meet in more than 35
years. The issue wasn’t because the Hawks swim club was bad, it was the fact
they didn’t have a team for all these years.
No one from back then is still here now at CRC to explain why
the swim program was abandoned, but a little more than a year ago athletic
director Liz Belyea wanted the sport once again at her school and got the
necessary approvals pushed through.
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Liz Abrams |
The woman she wanted to re-start the swim program, Elizabeth
Abrams, was hired in late 2014 and just a little more than a year later, the
Hawks were back in the water once again. To get girls interested they did just
about everything including putting an ad in the school newspaper. A few girls
showed up for fall workouts and then Abrams arrived in Jan.2015. A scant few
weeks later the season started.
“We had five girls on the team our first year,” she said. “It
was a close-knit group of girls who worked really hard. They were super
dedicated. There was a lot of improvement with in the scope of their
abilities.”
Their big accomplishment in year one was that they were not last
in the Big 8 Conference, which says a lot because teams of five are real small
for swimming, according to Abrams.
She is a Sacramento woman who grew up in Rancho Cordova, swam as
a teen with the Cordova Blue Marlins and later at American River College. She’s
a teacher in the San Juan Unified School District who was the swim coach at
Christian Brothers High School for several years.
Now in 2016 with a team double the size of year one with ten
girls she has her swimmers going through quite a regimen daily. They are in the
pool at 5:30 a.m. for two hours, then dry off and get ready for their day only
to return to the pool again in the evening after Abrams arrives from her
classroom teaching.
The goal this year for the Hawks’ swimmers is to lower their
times to get ready for the Big 8 Conference championships.
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CRC Swimmers taking a break from a workout recently |
Natasha Supan, the only sophomore swimmer on the team, lowered
two of her personal best records, one in the 200 meter individual medley and
also in the 100 meter breaststroke. She lowered her mark drastically. Before an
April 1 swim meet she swam her 200 IM in 2:55.32 and leaving the meet at
American River College` her new record for 200 IM was 2:46.18, a difference of
more than 6 seconds. Supan lowered her
100 Breaststroke time from 1:23.60 to 1:22.94.
Sara Krajnovic, at the same meet, lowered two of her personal
bests as well. Sara competed in the 100 butterfly event and decreased her time
from 1:21.04 to 1:20.29. In the 200 IM, she lowered her time from 2:49.95 to
2:45.60, a huge accomplishment for any swimmer.
Suraya Golden was able to lower her time in the 100
breaststroke by 3.10 seconds and she
also lowered her 50 meter freestyle mark from 27.59 to 27.47.
Jenna Singh had a standout
moment during the April 1 event when she dropped her time in the 100
meter butterfly from a personal best of 1:27.48, to 1:22.60. Liz Padilla swam
multiple events at American River but one personal record she beat by a good
amount of time was in her 100 backstroke. Singh decreased her time from 1:46.06
to 1:43.74.
Morgan Lemmons contributed to this story
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