Sports Varsity Swim Team Shatters Records

The Upper School varsity swim heads into the oseason a er a 2022-2023 campaign lled with success and shattered records, including two high nishes in the Southwest Preparatory Conference championships. e girls team nished fourth overall in the SPC 4A division, behind St. John’s Episcopal School, Duchesne Academy of the Sacred Heart and Hockaday School. It was a tight nish, as the top four teams were separated by 11 points, with St. John’s having the winning score of 98 and the Hornets nishing with 87.

Given the small team, Head Swim Coach Patti Monzingo going to be coming up to ninth grade this year, and so I knew that the girls would do well,” Monzingo said. erence dynamics, Monzingo says that she is proud of the group’s hard work and “When they’re having fun, then they to work together,” Monzingo said. “Even if we had not had the results that we had, the camaraderie of this at was my favorite thing about

Wai and Lonergan have trained under Monzingo’s guidance for several years. During their training time, Monzingo focused on building Greenhill swimmers from the ground up to establish good habits and consistency, she said. Along with an abundance of talent, the girls team members said they had the upper hand with their team morale. rough activities such as designing new merchandise and team clothing, they were able to form close bonds that translated into competitive success.

“All those things might seem small, but it really did make a di erence,” Monzingo said.

Arbuckle attributes much of their success to how close the team was able to grow this year.

“It was very upli ing,” Arbuckle said. “Everyone was very excited and there was a lot of energy all around. Everyone had a very positive attitude, a lot of ght, and swam with a lot of heart.”

Going into the SPC championships, the girls team was coming o an undefeated season. One of the team’s most memorable wins happened at the North Zone race, where the Greenhill girls experienced their rst win against Hockaday in 12 years.

“I knew that the girls were going to do well, but I had no idea that they were going to do that well prior to the start of the season,” Monzingo said.

Other key team members included Wai and Lonergan, who are part of a group already dubbed “ e Legends” by Monzingo.

“I knew that the group that we call ‘ e Legends’ were

200-yard freestyle relay while also placing second in the 3A 200-yard freestyle and winning the 3A 100-yard backstroke individually. Geller won the 100-yard backstroke and competed in the 200yard medley, the 400-yard freestyle and the 200-yard freestyle relay.

Geller swims for the Dallas Mustangs with both Arbuckle siblings. e three of them have been on the same club team for a couple of years now, and their relationship extends beyond the pool.

“ ey drive me to practice since it’s just down the road, and we have all been friends for awhile now,” Geller said.

J.J. Arbuckle says the boys team came together to li each other up.

“ e team environment, overall, was really nice,” he said. “ ere were a lot of people cheering for each other and outside of the pool. e environment at the SPC dinner was great. I feel like our team this year has bonded a lot better than last year because we got to hang out a lot more outside of school.” e boys team didn’t have any seniors this year, and their only captain was junior Seth Lee. Younger members like J.J.