Swimmers of the Month January 2026

1 Erika Bishop joined the Rapids this fall as a Mini, and is making great progress largely due to her consistent attendance, willingness to try, and persistence at learning new skills. 

1.5 Stephani Coetzee - a veteran swimmer at just 8 years of age, Stephani is a regular competitor at Regional swim meets. She’s almost always at practice, and is willing to give anything a try. Plus, she listens AND remembers what her coach said!

2 Victoria Le has improved phenomenally this month now that she has time to focus on her swimming again. She’s so close to mastering her nemesis (the whip kick) that we can almost taste it, and she took ridiculous amounts of time off her butterfly at the Terrace meet. 

3 Kosti Shapolova has made a sincere effort to attend all his practices, and this year has begun attending out of town Regional Meets, where he has had great success (when his goggles stay on). He’s beginning to master those pesky details like starts and turns so that he no longer gets DQ’d, and we expect great things from him this year. 

456 Sienna Ikari-Cappelli is having a real breakthrough year, and also a breakthrough month. She not only is our Swimmer of the Month with a gorgeous yellow hat, but she also captured the much vied for Swim of the Meet Kickboard with her performance in Terrace- a brilliantly executed 800 freestyle. AND she attended EVERY practice, which I believe makes her the winner of the January challenge as well - a 3X “wheeee-ner”!