By Simone Wilson
The swim meet schedule for the five-team Redwood Division of the 12-team North Bay League has been an exercise in controlled chaos this season.
The division includes Healdsburg, Windsor, Analy, Piner and Rancho Cotate high schools. Coaches from these teams agreed after the 2024 season that one matchup per school, or four meets per season, didn’t feel like enough. So this year they’re trying a “double round robin” schedule: All schools swim against each other twice, for eight total meets per team.
“Even though it was a good idea, it’s been kind of a nightmare as far as the scheduling goes,” said Dean Clark, head swim coach for the Healdsburg Hounds. He said recent closures and other issues at swimming pools across the division have only made the situation more chaotic.
One upside: Fans have far more chances to watch young local swimmers in action. The promising boys and girls swim teams from Healdsburg High School are now midway through their 2025 season, each with a handful of wins and only one loss on their records (both against Windsor), as of press time.
And they still have a final stretch of three high-stakes home meets ahead of them this month—one versus Rancho Cotate next Tuesday, April 8; one versus Windsor on Thursday, April 10; and one versus Piner on Tuesday, April 15. All meets “kick off” at 4pm at the Healdsburg pool on the HHS campus.
‘Cats Versus Dogs’
Coach Clark said the previous Windsor meet was “incredibly exciting,” but “unfortunately both teams lost in squeakers.” The boys lost by a single point after their final swimmer in the final relay finished just one foot behind Windsor’s counterpart, according to Clark. The girls lost by four points in their final relay as well.
All of which should make the Healdsburg-Windsor rematch on April 10 even more of a nail-biter.
The kids like to call these meets “cats versus dogs,” seeing as the Windsor Jaguars are playing the Healdsburg Hounds. And the Hounds often hold their own, even though they’re up against a school with more than three times as many students and around twice as many swimmers.
Star athletes to look out for at upcoming meets include Healdsburg junior Layla Greaves, a dynamite backstroker and breaststroker who has made it to North Coast Section championships the past couple of years and is approaching a school record that her own mother set in the 100-yard backstroke while swimming for HHS in the ’90s. Also watch sophomore Ela Boardman, who coach Clark calls the “rock” of the girls team, and teammates Gianna Domenichelli and Abby Wetzel, highly versatile senior swimmers from storied Healdsburg families.
On the boys side, keep an eye on Greaves’ little brother Lucas, a freshman with a lot of promise and a major family legacy to fuel him, two pairs of brothers from the local Kluse and Johannsen Giuffre clans, and Yeshua Lemus, an “inspirational, quiet and hardworking” senior who “could barely swim his freshman year” and is now “one of our faster swimmers,” according to Clark.
The Turnover Effect
Last year, the girls team had their best season in Clark’s half-decade as a coach, winning gold in the division and bronze in the league. This year, they’re down a couple of swimmers to 11 team members—just under the ideal threshold of 12—but they’ve been holding their own in a tough field.
The boys team, meanwhile, is trying to claw its way back to former glory. The boys took home gold in their division and silver in the league in 2022 and again in 2023, only to fall to second and sixth place last year, respectively.
Coach Clark attributed this dip mostly to a classic high-school turnover issue: Nearly half the boys team’s members in 2023 were seniors and none were juniors, leaving the 2024 team slim (at 10 members) and inexperienced. But the pendulum swung back in their favor this year: The team has beefed back up to 13 swimmers, giving them a shot at division gold and the potential for a strong league finish.
Members of both the girls and boys teams have also been learning what a big impact they can have on the final score when they swim more difficult races that might be out of their comfort zones. Even if they don’t win these races, this strategy is critical for racking up extra points at a meet.
“It’s been one of those teachable moments,” Clark said.
After their three final home meets this month, the Hounds will head to league championships at the state-of-the-art Santa Rosa Junior College pool on April 25 and 26.
Looking ahead to next year, Healdsburg’s swim teams face another big round of turnover in 2026. “We’ll have to do some recruiting in the off-season,” Clark said, “and get the swimmers involved, because I think it’s more fun coming from them to talk to younger kids.”
Even though Healdsburg High is the smallest school in the North Bay League, students are lucky to have their own on-campus pool, a crew of passionate swim coaches and an established swimming culture that seems to keep them coming out for the team, year after year.
Having dynamos like Layla Greaves on the team also tends to lift all boats, according to Clark. “What it really does is inspire everybody else to improve,” he said. “To do better. To train harder.”
Locals can head to the Healdsburg pool next Thursday afternoon to see if it’s enough to take down the Wildcats.
