Coupeville swimmers hope to grow tiny girls co-op program
Coupeville girls who want to swim still need Oak Harbor to have a team at all, and two Wolf swimmers are trying to recruit enough new athletes to keep the co-op alive.
Coupeville girls who want to swim still have to do it through Oak Harbor, because Coupeville High School does not field its own girls program. Alexandra Lo and Liliana Newberg have kept the Wolf name in the water by training in a cooperative setup, and now they are trying to widen a roster that starts with just two.
That small number is the central problem and the central opportunity. Lo and Newberg swam with Oak Harbor High School last fall before splitting off for postseason competition, a reminder that Coupeville athletes have to fit their season around another school’s program. The current push is aimed at Coupeville girls in grades 8 through 12, with the message that experience is not required and that new swimmers can learn while helping build something that might last.
The team’s local base is John Vanderzicht Memorial Pool, the indoor pool run by the North Whidbey Pool, Park and Recreation District on the north end of Whidbey Island. That facility gives Island County swimmers a place to train even when a school cannot support its own pool program, and it is the kind of community infrastructure that keeps a small sport within reach of young athletes who might otherwise never try it.
Lo and Newberg have already shown what two swimmers can do. At the 1A/2A District 1 meet in Anacortes, Lo finished eighth in the finals of both the 200 free and 500 free. Newberg turned in personal records in the prelims of the 100 free and 100 breaststroke. Coupeville Sports later described them as the two-woman core of the group, and the logic is simple: if a few more girls join, the number of female Wolf swimmers in the co-op effectively doubles.
That is why the recruitment push matters now, before another season rolls around with the same thin numbers. Interested families are being directed to Sarah Costas-Lo, identified as Wolf Mom, as the point of contact for girls who want to join the effort. For small schools, the difference between a program that survives and one that disappears can come down to whether enough students are willing to try a sport that already has a home in the county, even if Coupeville does not yet have one of its own.
Washington’s rules already make room for that kind of solution. The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association has a formal cooperative-request process for member schools, and state law gives school boards authority over interschool athletic activities. For Coupeville, that means girls swim does not have to end at the school’s lack of a standalone team, but it does depend on more families saying yes.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
