For Kimberly Tiss, swimming is almost second nature. She said that she joined the swim team at Armijo because, when she was younger, she swam for the local swim club, Solano Aquatic Sea Otters (SASO).

After being part of club and school swim teams, it was natural for her to join Armijo’s water polo team to improve her speed and agility. “I needed to be in some kind of daily routine, so [water polo] was a perfect fit.”

In pre-season, she worked with swimmers on techniques and dives, but then they started getting into distance and timed sets. “Coach Rob is definitely a different type of swim coach,” Tiss said. “He went to Fairfield high school where he swam, so he’s sometimes old fashion with his techniques, but overall he’s a great motivational asset to our swim team.”

This is her second year on the Armijo team and she has found that her stroke had been too short, If she didn’t fix it, she knew that her college career would be “toast,” as well as her shoulder, so she has been working on improving her reach.

“I look forward to the challenges of racing,” Tiss said. “Since we don’t have a lot of teams in our bracket, you see the same swimmers beat you over and over again and it pushes you to be better because you want to take first instead of second.”

A typical week of swimming for Tiss is practice in the morning from at 5:30 – 7 am and after school from 3 – 5 pm, swimming about 3000 yards at each practice. That means that, within one week, she swims up to 18 hours and 30,000 yards. “My biggest strength is definitely my ability to pace for long events, like the 500 free (20 laps),” Tiss said. “Since I’ve grown up having to play hour-long polo games, I’ve been trained to conserve my energy for long periods of time, which has made my 500 splits some of the most consistent in the league.”

She’s an accomplished swimmer, but Tiss does have a big weakness: her temper. It tends to become most evident when Coach Marin doesn’t get a specific time or misses the start of the race that was incredibly important to her.

These bouts of temper are balanced with her dedication. Tiss is known to take time early in the season to help new swimmers with dives and techniques, paving the way to success. “Success in a pool, to me, is a section time or a first place. If you beat all the odds and got a first place, that is the best feeling. With a section time, it is that relief you get to have another try to win, another opportunity to improve yourself and make yourself better,” she said.