Saturday morning marked the beginning of a brand new swimming season. Athletes from more than 10 schools, ranging from Astoria, Seaside, Beaverton and Newport, gathered at the Astoria Aquatic Center and jumped into the pool for the first time.

The 2023 Andrew Nygaard Invitational served as the proving ground for new athletes to introduce themselves to the swimming world and allow returners the chance to build on last season’s success. The Astoria and Seaside swim teams used this meet to see where they are after a month of training. Both programs graduated a number of swimmers and were eager to see how their teams stacked up.

“It’s the first meet of the year, we’re just going to set the bar and see where they are and grow from there,” Seaside head coach Shane Spell said. “We have a lot of new swimmers, and everyone took on the events that we asked and as far as I’m concerned it was a great first meet.”

Seaside graduated 12 swimmers from last year’s team and just 10 returned. Despite the massive turnover, Spell was happy to see how well many of his new athletes swam, as some had never been in a swim meet before.

“If you would have came to their first practice of the season and compared it to now, it wouldn’t be recognizable,” Spell said. “There’s been so much improvement over the last three weeks and I’m super proud of them. It takes a lot to go into a new sport for the first time and they all took on the challenge without hesitation.”

Spell named Mika Cannon in the 100-meter butterfly, senior Annie Rehnert in the relays and Kaleb Bingham in the 500 freestyle as athletes who he thought had good meets, but said every student from newcomers to returners swam well and gave him a good foundation for the rest of the season.

In the overall rankings, Seaside finished eighth out of 11 teams for the girls and fifth out of 11 teams for the boys.

‘Expectations were exceeded’

Astoria also had a number of new swimmers after graduating a number of state qualifiers. Because of this, head coach Paul Gascoigne wasn’t sure exactly what to expect from his team.

“Expectations were exceeded,” Gascoigne said. “They had better swims than I was expecting. Sometimes there’s swims you wish were better, but going down the list of all of our swimmers between personal records, how their strokes looked, you’ve got great highlights and things to build off.”

Astoria had a number of swimmers who impressed the crowd. Returners Jacob Peeler and Finn Bizzell had multiple event wins and impressive times. On the girls side, Hannah Daniels won two events and swam strong in the relays.

“A lot of the newer swimmers performed extremely well,” Gascoigne said. “Gabriel White swam an absolutely fantastic 200 freestyle. Rylee Knight swam great in the 100 backstroke.”

Other top performers included Lily Smith in the 100 breaststroke, and Peeler winning the 500-yard freestyle. Bizzell clocked a career-best relay split in the 400-meter relay.

The relay team of John Ero, Peeler, Bizzell and Casey Dopp started off the meet with a win in the 200-yard medley and Astoria closed out the meet with a come from behind win in the 400-yard freestyle relay. White joined Dopp, Bizzell and Peeler on the first-place winning team.

“One of the swimmers on the relay team is brand new,” Gascoigne said. “Their relay last year scored in state, but we graduated two of the boys from that team, so we are rebuilding it with new people on the relay. Casey did great as the leadoff, dropping three seconds off his personal best, and then Gabe hadn’t swum a 100 freestyle until that relay. Overall, just really fun to watch and a good way to end the meet.”

Astoria had a strong performance as a team, finishing second for both the boys and girls.