Rams Race at CIF-SS Finals

May 11, 2026

The Cate girls finished their season tonight with some great swims at the CIF Southern Section Division 2 Championships.

Emi Kanda-Gleeson finished 11th in the 100 backstroke, cracking the minute barrier for the first time with a new school record of 59.97, breaking her own mark from prelims. She finished 14th in the 200 Individual Medley in a time of 2:14.09, also a new school record. Emi has put the work in all year to get faster, and it really paid off in her races tonight.

The 200 medley relay team of Tori Kim, Sofia Wang, Kanda-Gleeson and Jen Won finished 17th in their event. They were the first relay team in Cate swimming history to advance to a scoring final at the Division 2 level.The Cate swim team finished its four-day odyssey to the CIF Southern Section Championships at Mt. Sac with two individual finals swims for Josiah Hansen ‘27. Josiah finished 12th in the 100 butterfly and 14th in the 100 backstroke, both in times a few hundredths of a second off the new Cate School records he set in prelims two days earlier. On the strength of these two individual swims alone, Cate—undoubtedly the smallest school at the meet by far—finished tied for 31st place overall at the meet with Troy, a school from Fullerton with 2500 students, and Oaks Christian, an athletic powerhouse with 1000 students.

The CIF Southern Section Division 1 Championship is the most storied high school meet run the country, and among the fastest. Numerous Olympians have competedthere, national high school and American records have been set there (even yesterday, a sophomore from Santa Monica missed a national record by one tenth of a second). This is the highest level Cate swimmers have ever competed at, and they performed so admirably. While our other swimmers did not advance to finals, the relays that included Jae Wykoff ‘26, Elliott Paige ‘26, Wil Rivera ‘27 and Devon Liang ‘27 were not far off the cutoff line. And while only Josiah qualified for an individual event, Wil was the first alternate in his event and Devon was the second alternate in his, so they just missed it.

We enjoyed this trip, and took away lessons that will allow us to be even better when we’re back at this meet next year. When you see your Cate Swim back on campus this week, congratulate them on a really impressive season.