10-year-old swimmer continues success with Silicon Valley
Aquatics
GILROY – In competitive swimming, the butterfly stroke can be the most beautiful of them all, as the swimmer swings both arms through the water thrusting her body forward head first.
And, at the same time, it also can be the most powerful.
When 10-year-old butterflier Christina Raby, of Gilroy, first got in the water, there was just something natural about it. She had tried other sports with support from her father and grandparents, but swimming was the one for her.
She was 6 years old then, and now four years later Christina, who won the 50 Fly at this year’s Zone Championships in a time of 32.67 seconds, is training four days a week at the Live Oak High School pool with world class coach Bill Thompson of the Silicon Valley Aquatics Association (SVAA).
“I love the water,” Christina said before a training session. “I like to go fast.”
While the butterfly is her bread-and-butter, Christina also placed second in the 50 Free at the Zones held at Hartnell College in Salinas in the 9- to 10-year-old age division as well as third in the 50 Back, 50 Breast, 100 IM, and 100 Free.
“I was really, really happy because there were a lot of kids I was competing against,” said Christina, who was competing against 145 kids in her age group among the 1,300 participants. “I felt really good when I was swimming because I felt I was going really fast.”
In the butterfly championship race, the Luigi Aprea fifth-grader was given a serious challenge from another top swimmer. They were neck-and-neck at the turn, but Christina pulled out the biggest victory of her young, promising career.
“When you see her at practice, she has really nice strokes, but you don’t know how fast she is until you see her at the meets. She always saves something. You never get it all out of her until the meets,” said Chris Raby of his daughter. “There are a lot of things I see in her mom that I see in her like the competitiveness. Her mom was very athletic.”
Jeannette Raby died Aug. 30, 2001, due to a seizure associated with viral encephalitis, which she was diagnosed with in 1999.
“Christina is like her mom in a lot of ways,” Chris Raby said. “Her mom raised her brothers when she was young. … and now she is doing the same for her younger brother. It caused her to grow up.”
It also became the inspiration for Christina every time she jumps into the pool.
“I get excited. When she won the butterfly, I was so excited, probably as excited as her,” said the proud father, whose eight-year-old son Michael also swims with SVAA. “She works with him. She teaches him the strokes and flip turns and things like that.”
At a mere 4 foot 10 inches tall and 72 pounds, Christina, who started with the Morgan Hill Makos Swim Club, can glide through the water. And with her 11th birthday coming up, she will move up an age division to a tougher level of competition.
“She’s very competitive,” Thompson said of Christina. “I’m a real believer in a long, slow process. The most important thing is that she loves swimming and loves being part of a team. She will develop swim technique and work ethic over time. Our whole philosophy here is kids progress at their own pace.”
There are 160 year-round swimmers in the SVAA as well as 100 seasonal swimmers under the guidance of Coach Thompson, who was a teammate of Olympian Mark Spitz at Santa Clara High School where he later coached from 1974-89, and was coached by Hall of Famer George Haines, named the Coach of the Century for the new millennium. Thompson’s impressive credentials, as well as many of his swimmers earning college scholarships, were what attracted the Rabys from Gilroy.
Christina is still hard at work in the Live Oak High pool chasing her dream of one day swimming in the Olympics.
“I swim all year round,” Christina said. “When my coach asked me if I wanted to swim year round I said yes right away because I wanted to move up and do better. It makes a really big difference.”
