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Fremont
July 15, 2025

Ohlone swim team triumphs at state championships

The Renegades reflect on their successful season

School is out but a few students are wandering the Ohlone College campus in Fremont, most likely there for summer classes. When walking the campus most of the talking, shouting and laughing is accompanied by loud splashes. 

At Ohlone, even on a quiet day the pool is filled with swimmers sharing the pool, either for summer programs or preparing for the fall season. The Ohlone for Kids (OFK) swim program is one of them. Ohlone’s head swim coach Jenson Chen is coaching OFK. Chen takes a more fundamental approach with the program. A different pace of what he has taken only weeks prior. 

Chen has coached the community college’s swim team since 2022, and this past season he saw significant improvement with team rankings and individual swimmer success. 

One of those individual standout swimmers is Teagan Rees. Transferring to UC Berkeley this fall, Rees swept the Ohlone leaderboard in the mile, 100 and 200 breaststroke, 200 butterfly, 400 individual medley and 500 freestyle. “She currently has the most records of the female swimmers at Ohlone,” said Chen. Along with her Ohlone records, she earned the third-place medal in the 100 breaststroke at the regional Coast Conference.

Rees has been swimming competitively since she was seven years old and has a confidence in her abilities that pushes her to swim more challenging races. “I would just pick an event that most people don’t want to swim,” said Rees. “Theoretically, I know that I can do it. I’ve been swimming long enough that I know I can do distance decently well, I just have to finish.”

Rees, who is on the pool deck year-round and is one of the volunteer coaches at OFK, wants to leave her mark at Ohlone. “I have records that are going to be here longer than I am. So I am kind of creating that legacy. It’s really cool,” said Rees. 

Although swimming is an individual sport, the men’s team dominated the relays in their 2025 season. With the men’s team being larger than the women’s, there were more opportunities to create relays teams and win points for the Renegades as a whole since replays points are worth double that of individual races. “Most of us try to sacrifice individual races,” said rising junior Moatatz Bayoumi. “We’re trying to make sure we get as [many] team points as we can on stacked events. It’s more of a team effort.”

That sacrifice and planning paid off when the Ohlone men’s team took over their regional meet at the College of San Mateo. “There were 19 men’s events in the Coast Conference. We won 10 of them,” said Chen. Four of those races were the 200 freestyle, 400 freestyle, 200 medley, 400 medley relays. The winning relay team was made up of Ryin Ruaboro, Moatatz Bayoumi, Ray Cillo and Alexander Torjyan.

With the relay’s first-place win they qualified for the State Championship at Santa Rosa Junior College. At the state meet relay team secured sixth and seventh place in the men’s 400 and 200 medley relay, respectively. Along with the team wins, Ruaboro and Cillo placed in the top 10 of their individual races at state.

Much of the success of the 2025 team is credited to the recruiting. Chen has coached the majority of the swimmers since they were kids; the promise of having Chen as a coach brought back Ruaboro and Bayoumi to swimming after they had made the decision to quit swimming competitively in high school. 

“The reason we came back was because we knew he would be our coach and he knew what we could do in terms of progress,” said Bayoumi. “He had a huge effect on us being here.” 

The Ohlone team aren’t the only ones who’ve recognized Chen’s coaching ability. Chen was given the Coast Conference Men’s Swimming Coach of the Year award.

With so much success in the 2025 season the team has high expectations for the incoming swimmers. Bayoumi shared words for the next team: “Keep that title. Don’t lose it. We worked a lot for it. Hopefully people realize Ohlone is a good place for a swim program.”

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