Swimmer part of two records in high school debut
By: Justin Feil
Virginia Hung could have been a little unsettled to find out that the West Windsor-Plainsboro North swim team was talking about her at the beginning of last season.
She has nothing to worry about. The Knights had only good things to say about Hung, who lived up to her advanced billing when the freshman phenom was a part of two record-setting performances in the girls’ swim team’s 108-62 win over South Brunswick on Thursday. The Knight boys’ also won by the identical score.
Hung won the 100 butterfly in a school record and swam a leg of the winning and record-breaking 200 freestyle relay that also included Raquel and Rocio Riestra and Michelle Cino. Hung had targeted the fly mark on the board at WW-P North. The relay record was a bonus.
"I wanted to break the 100 fly record," Hung said. "I looked at it. The 100 fly is my best event. "I wasn’t expecting to break the relay record, but Raquel (Riestra), she’s a junior and she said, ‘We’re really, really close. Everyone should get around a 29 and we should get it.’ An individual record is always great, but this really is all about teamwork."
The addition of Hung is something sure to boost the team. Her debut Thursday comes after a year of anticipation.
"I started hearing about Virginia Hung last year from all the kids," said WW-P North head coach Tiffany Brennan, whose team was scheduled to face Pennington on Monday. "It was about this time, and the kids were saying, wait until she’s here."
On one hand, Brennan wanted to focus on her first year as Knights head coach, but at the same time she had to be excited about the near future. After graduating one significant scorer from last year’s team that went 5-6, the Knights have set themselves up for a better year with a number of strong incoming freshmen.
"Our kids have come back with much better attitudes," Brennan said. "Last year, I was a first-year coach and they were feeling me out. It didn’t start smoothly necessarily. Now everyone knows what to expect, including me. Everyone is ready to work hard and have fun. And the freshmen are along for the ride.
"It’s not just Virginia," she added of the outstanding newcomers. "All these new people are going to score at every meet. We lost three, but only one that really scored a lot. We’ve gained a lot more girls and boys than we lost."
Hung, who swims for the X-cel club team, was looking forward to joining the high school team and contributing. She didn’t know how much everyone else was looking forward to it.
"I knew they wanted more people to come out," Hung said. "I didn’t know I was being talked about."
The talk won’t stop with the Knights if Hung can make as big a splash on the Colonial Valley Conference scene. She’s hoping to be able to contribute to what is a different experience from what she’s had in club swimming. The high school season is more team-oriented.
"It’s a lot of fun," Hung said. "You hang around these people for a long time and get to show them what you’re good at and you get to be a team with them.
"I think our team is pretty good right now. We get along really well. We have a lot of team spirit."
Those are ingredients of success at the high school level. It’s not just Hung who has elevated the Knights’ expectations for the season. She has a solid class of freshmen that came in plus a more devoted group of upperclassmen that welcomed the first-year high school swimmers.
"They were real excited to know we had five or six kids that are here as freshmen that will make a difference," Brennan said. "They see even before the first meet that we’re better than we were last year. And you hope that the people that are still around are better. They’re excited. I think they can do well.
"We didn’t even really put our fastest lineup into our first meet. We’re still feeling out the freshmen and we wanted to try them in some different events. We felt comfortable we could win. It was a very good start to the year."
WW-P North is hoping that it can continue to build on the performance throughout the season. That improvement almost assuredly will cost some record-holders their spot on the WW-P North record board. And it should help the Knights improve on last year’s record.
"In high school swimming," Brennan said, "there are so many meets where we win by 50 points and some that we’ve lost by 50 points and then a couple that are close. Last year, we didn’t do so well with the meets that were real close. Hopefully we’ll come away with a few more of those."
Hung has set her sights high, on West Windsor-Plainsboro South, which the Knights and the rest of the CVC has been chasing unsuccessfully for six years. Hung hopes to be a part of the group that changes that this season.
"The biggest competition is South," Hung said. "They’ve been losing to them for a long time. My goal would be for the team to beat South. Just the fact that in the new class we have so many club swimmers we’ll actually have a chance."
Hung is one of those year-round swimmers who has steadily improved through the years. She is expected to contribute in the breaststroke and also the 200 individual medley as well as two relays. Fly, though, is where she’ll make the biggest mark. She didn’t even realize how good she could be in the fly before a Princeton Area Swimming and Diving Association meet opened her eyes to it.
"I found out my 50 was pretty good there," she said. "I started working on the 100 then."
Now, in her first high school meet, she’s the WW-P North record holder in the event. With four more seasons in front of her, it’s unlikely the name will change though the time should. Watching the mark drop lower and lower should only make Virginia Hung the topic of plenty of talk among the Knights and their opponents.
Something says that she won’t mind.

