When Parkland High School held its graduation ceremonies last spring, it had to be a bittersweet day for swimming coach Rob Robitaille. Every coach wants to see athletes go on to college and a successful life after that, but they also have to face life without the athletes who are moving on in their lives. Robitaille saw a lot of quality athletes move on last spring.

Fast forward a few months and the swimming season is under way. Robitaille is still trying to figure out how to fill all of the holes, but he’s got a lot of reasons to be optimistic. The Parkland squad is smaller than usual coming into this season, but there’s still plenty of talent to choose from and Robitaille isn’t too concerned.

“We’re much, much smaller than we usually are this year,” he said. “We’ll have Parkland swims, but we’re not going to have as many right now, because we’re in a building phase where we’re getting kids who are newer to the sport and the kids that are just coming back into training out of this or that. We’re going to get there, it just might take us a little bit of time. They’re doing well, but we’re just small this year. We just have to build a lot more this year.”

Sienna Salvaggio, who cornered the market on medals in her high school career, collecting six District 11 gold medals and four PIAA gold medals in individual events, was one of the names called at graduation. Salvaggio is now swimming for Penn State, while girls that she helped to mentor as a team leader look to make their mark on the Parkland program.

“On the girls side, we have two sets of twins,” said Robitaille. “We have the Sheridans [Abigail and Zoe] and the Sicinskis [Courtney and Megan] and I think they’re going to have good seasons for themselves. We also have Grace Kennedy, who has come a long way in her development and will be successful for us.”

In addition to the two sets of twins, there are more family connections at Parkland, with five other sets of siblings all listed on the roster for this season.

“The Sisinski twins, who are juniors, were just summer swimmers until their freshman year and they’ve really developed well,” said Robitaille. “We’re talking a four-second drop in their times, so they’ve gone from where swimming was barely on the radar and now, we’re talking college scholarships. So that’s awesome.

“On the girls team, the juniors and seniors are coming along at a great rate. The last four years, we built a lot, and this year, it’s going to take a lot of building and so far, we’re coming around. We’re doing a couple things different. We’re lifting a lot more than we ever have. We have more power equipment and we’re getting the kids on those on a much more consistent basis.”

The boys side is where the numbers are appreciably smaller, with far fewer boys competing for Parkland this season. One of the swimmers showing quick improvement is junior Matt Ceh.

“He’s throwing down half-second to a full-second better times from his season best from last season, so hopefully, we can help to develop that,” said Robitaille. “We have brand new kids that couldn’t even swim a 50 and now, they’re completing a 100, so they’re coming along very well. I don’t want to diminish anything that our kids are going to do. We’re just a smaller team. I’m very happy with the results from [Saturday’s invitational], very happy.”