Like any sport, swimming has a whole handbook of rules. But the golden rule of Stagg swimming won’t be found in any manual: “Don’t embarrass the coach.”

A violation of this rule can come in many forms, like wearing a nose plug, bringing pajamas to a meet, or heaven forbid, using a Pokemon towel. But among all of the possible infringements, being a slow swimmer isn’t one of them.

“The stuff we have to work on is stuff you (usually)  learn when you’re 6 or 7,” said coach Marcus Sherman. But the students on the team don’t have that training, he added. “If we did it by experience, we’d have two people on the team.”

Although the team is largely made up of people new to the sport, there is a small group of swimmers who have been on the team before. One veteran is senior Samantha Wang, who has been on the team since her sophomore year.

Wang is busy year-round with sports, playing also for the basketball and volleyball teams, as well as an off-season swim team. Her experience with other teams, however, has been different from the focus swimming puts on individual improvement.

“You can’t always rely on your team,” Wang said. “You have to really rely on yourself sometimes.”

Senior Angelo Robles, a newcomer to the team, agrees. “You have to perfect yourself because your teammates can’t pick up your dead weight.”

The team is larger than recent years, but unlike other coaches who look to cut players, Sherman opted not to regardless of skill levels.

“It’s not a fault, it’s just a reality,” Sherman said. “The experience level has gone down, and that just adds to the challenge.” The result is a team with a mix of members from Stagg, Stockton Early College Academy, Pacific Law Academy and Weber Institute.

He also kept some of the less experienced swimmers for the sheer amount of determination they showed. In the end, Sherman emphasized, the value of swimming was each player’s progress. “Individually they always improve,” he said. “Always.”

Among those most improved thus far is PLA junior Erin Clark. Her determination with swimming has improved not only her time, but also her health. But she jokes that she just wants “to not die.”

One of the challenges for newcomers is the unique skill set swimming demands. Camille Zapata, a junior from Weber, noted the inherent lack of air as a radical difference from other sports. “It’s not like any other sport because with any other sport you can actually breathe,” she said. She also added that you have to learn to coordinate “every part of your body” to really do well.

But perhaps the most radical difference with swimming is the disturbing amount of bodily fluids.“We pee in the pool!” said a senior who, upon reflection, asked not to be named. When interviewed, she said she had already urinated once and would probably do so “three more times,” a fact she announced proudly.