Led by sisters Olivia and Sonia Khan, the Foothill College swim team hopes to soar to new heights as individuals and relay teams look forward to qualifying for the California Community College Athletic Association championships in May – all without a home pool.
Two months into the season, the Los Altos High graduates are the fastest women on the Owls swim team. Olivia specializes in backstroke events, while younger sister Sonia excels in multiple events.
The sisters have several years of experience in the pool. Along with swimming for Los Altos High, from which Olivia graduated in 2022 and Sonia in 2023, they also swam for SwimMAC Carolina in N.C. and Palo Alto Stanford Aquatics.
Olivia went as far as the Central Coast Section Championships in her high school career, qualifying in multiple individual events. To her, joining the Foothill team was a no-brainer.
“I just really liked being in the water,” Olivia said. “If I don’t swim, I sometimes get really anxious and crazy. It doesn’t even need to be competitive, but I like the competitive part too.”
Sonia, who took a break from swimming for Los Altos during her senior year, returned to the pool just last fall.
“My senior year, I lost my passion for swimming,” Sonia said. “I joined back because I wanted to stay in shape, and I’m enjoying it much more now. What drives me right now is just being a team and working with other people.”
Olivia shared a similar view on the transition from high school and club swimming to the college team.
“Swimming here has been different from club because there’s little to no pressure,” Olivia said. “It’s just for fun, it’s just for our mental health. Everybody is super supportive of each other.”
While Sonia made her college swimming debut this season, Olivia returned for her second year on the team. Last season, Olivia was named Foothill’s Female Athlete of the Year after setting a school record in the 200-yard backstroke and placing second in two individual events at states. This year, Olivia has also helped expand the team around campus and boost camaraderie.
“Olivia’s competitive, but she’s also very easy to talk to and very approachable,” Bissell said. “She’s even recruited two or three more kids to swim for the team. She’s just a really easy person to be friends with.
However, amid the joy they find at practice, the sisters and the team swim without a home pool. Due to mechanical and heating issues, the Foothill pool was closed indefinitely in 2022, forcing the team to practice at nearby De Anza College.
The lack of a home practice facility has forced Bissell to adjust the training schedule and add more practice-time options; he said many student-athletes found difficulty planning the commute time between Foothill and De Anza between tight periods. For the swimmers, balancing classes and swimming at another school’s pool poses technical and time-management difficulties.
“Transportation-wise, we have to drive quite a bit further to go to practice, and we end up waking up significantly earlier to get there,” Sonia said. “And then we have to make sure that our practice times work with our class times because sometimes they overlap or you can’t get back to Foothill from De Anza before it starts. So it’s a little bit difficult.”
Despite not having a pool to call home, the sisters try to remain positive about the season.
“Having the two of them is great,” Bissell said. “They inject enthusiasm into the practice; we’re talking about 6:30 in the morning practices, and a lot of people don’t want to be there, but they show up and they’re there. They’re friendly, they’re happy, they’re ready to train hard.”
