Just keep swimming, just keep swimming Member of women’s swim team juggles swimming and becoming a life guard

If it wasn’t for a dog she might not have entered the pool. She has loved the water since she was young, but never actually introduced to swimming until she got a little push.

“I learned how to swim when I was four or five,” second year Pierce College Chiara Perbil. “A dog pushed me in the water and I learned how to swim that way by getting out. Survival of the fittest, right.”

Perbil, 20, is a communications major and was a reporter for the Roundup last semester but decided to focus on swimming, as this would be her final year on the team.

“For any sport at the school you can only compete for two years so this was my last season that I just finished,” Perbil said. “It was emotional because coming into my last year I wanted to do better than I did last year. I was doing really well up until the point that I got sick.”

She got a dual ear infection with a sinus infection and she said if she didn’t take care of it, she could have had hearing problems.

“We had swimming on a Monday and I had a sinus infection and I didn’t know it,” Perbil said. “Because of the pressure it caused a lot more damage so when I went home I had to go to the ER.”

Perbil had to stay out of the water for three weeks and missed two swim meets during that time.

“My coaches were like, ‘When are you coming back? We need you,’ and then my doctor said, ‘If you don’t listen to us and you get back in the water you can cause reinfection and it can cause hearing problems.’ So it was scary,” Perbil said.

Perbil was able to make a full recovery and is ready for her new position as a lifeguard for the Pierce College pool which involves duties that extend beyond monitoring the pools from the tower.

“During the summer it’s going to be very busy,” Perbil said. “There’s going to be swim camps for kids. We supervise the kids and we can even teach classes.”

Deborah Hefter, 28, is the swimming pool supervisor for Pierce and conducts the lifeguard training.

“They are required to take a lifeguard training course with me where we cover CPR, first aid, they learn about water rescues, about back boarding and ambulatory and in-water back boarding,” Hefter said. “During the summer we have swim lessons. Usually we’ll have about 300 students per day. We run

Scooby’s Corner Sports Column

Ethan Hanson Assistant Editor

When Pierce looked down and out, after an ugly showing in game one of the first round, there were a lot of questions about the status of the team.

Were they too shell-shocked from their performance that they were going to get swept? What happened to the bat of freshman stud Joe Moran who went 0-3 in game one?

Then the same old question appeared again: how are the Brahmas going to stack up in any situation with only eight pitchers and two definite starters in Harsa Prahara and Michael Knopf?

Women’s swim team member about seven classes and I have two instructors per class so that’s 14 just teaching plus I have another five or six on deck running towers, running deck rotation, checking people in. It’s a pretty massive operation during the summer.”

Currently there are 30 lifeguards on staff with another 20 expected to begin soon. The process of becoming a lifeguard began in November said Regina Agopian, 18, a political science major and future lifeguard.

“We’ve been training on Saturdays for like six hours since March,” Agopian said. “Technically our evaluation and interview was in November. They had some stuff for us to do in the pool.”

Agopian has known Perbil since they were in vocal assemble in junior year in high school. Perbil still enjoys singing, as well as photography. She enjoys the drama of entertainment news and would like to work for E! News one day. In her immediate future Perbil wants to continue swimming and hopes to continue swimming at a university after one more year at

Pierce. Perbil hopes to continue swimming when she transfers to a university.

“I want to go to Cal Lutheran so hopefully I can go there,” Perbil said. “They have a club team and an actual swim team.”

She also has been riding horses since she was 10 years old. She has less time to ride these days but tries to put in some time and stay as active as she can.

“With swim team and school it’s hard, so sometimes I’ll just go and ride with a friend or something. I don’t go often but it’s always nice when you have the chance to get on a horse and just be free roaming,”

Perbil said. “I just like being an active person. If I’m not in the water I have to be doing something, so either that or the gym. I can’t just sit there.”

But along came the calm and collected Daniel Barazza, who during game one was almost an afterthought. Even though there were many negative thoughts swirling around him, like the fact he had struggled to get out of an inning and hadn’t pitched passed the fifth inning since the month of February.

His personality dictates the way he pitches. Quiet, soft-spoken and relaxed, he doesn’t talk a lot, when he does it is simple and with perspective.

Yet when the Brahmas needed someone to answer the bell after Prahara pitched a gem in game two, it was Barazza who stepped up. His calm demeanor in the face of elimination was the x-factor.

If the last series is indicative of how the playoffs are going to be and how the Brahmas are going to succeed, they will need another effort from the cool, calm and collected Daniel Barazza.