Mariella Balboa found out that she had a lot of free time, so she decided to go into swimming. “I thought it would be fun,” she said.

So far, her most memorable meet was vs. Rodriguez High School. “It was raining pretty hard earlier that day and I was told ‘even if it’s raining we still had to swim’. This made me nervous at first because I didn’t really have anything to cover my backpack,” she said. All in all, it was a pretty fun swim meet.

Balboa was introduced to the sport from Coach Melissa Wilson and she learned that she prefers the freestyle stroke in individual races. “Don’t be scared to join [a sport],” she said. “Meeting new people can be fun.”

Swimming is not all Balboa is involved with on campus. “Besides swimming, I’m involved with J.R.O.T.C.” she said. “I’m there Colorguard commander.”

She comes from a big family and identified her older sisters Mariah (17) and Gabby (25), as her role models because “they help me out a lot when I need them,” she said. She also has two older brothers, Riog (29) and Ricky (32), and a younger sister, and Jocelyn (11).