Mercer Island boys swim and dive opened its season with a win over Lake Washington Thursday, Dec. 4, beating the Kangs 113-72 at Mary Wayte Pool. The Islanders won eight of the day’s 12 events.

After the meet, coach Chauntelle Johnson said she was just happy to see the Islanders get a team win.

“We were very low in numbers. We didn’t have a ton of kids that were eligible because they didn’t have enough practices, so for us to have essentially 16 kids and barely fill out an entire meet lineup, I thought we did pretty good,” Johnson said.

Ben Dixon kicked things off by taking first in the diving event. Oliver Hoff won the 200 free with a time of 1:51.52 and the 500 free at 5:07.47. Drew Fukuda took first in the 200 IM at 2:08.74 and also won the 100 breaststroke at 1:02.48.

Ian Caldwell won the 50 free, finishing in 22.42 seconds, while Jack Larkin took the 100 fly at 59.2 seconds. In the final event of the day, the team of Caldwell, Ben Stoops, Hoff and Fukuda won the 400 free relay with a time of 3:30.84.

While Johnson was pleased with how the Islanders fared given the circumstances heading into the meet, she said noted her team needed a few more races to sharpen up their game.

“We still have a lot of work to do, the first meet of every season can be a little bit rough,” Johnson said. “Everybody had to be a little bit out of their comfort zone, and swim events with not a lot of rest and swim some things back-to-back. They were able to figure that out, so I’m proud of them for that.”