For years, the Mission Viejo’s aquatics program has been second to none in the South Coast League. The Boys’ swim team this year added to this storied program as they took a young team, filled with mostly sophomores and finished 2nd in the South Coast League. After a very successful 2007 campaign the Diablos knew this would be a rebuilding year because the majority of the team graduated last year. That didn’t mean they would take the season off though. The young Diablos rolled into the second to last meet of the season surprisingly undefeated, with an impressive 3-0 record and ranked 6th in the county. That set up an epic match up with Capistrano Valley, who sat right behind Mission ranked 7th in the county and also undefeated. Unfortunately the Diablos stumbled a little bit, losing a critical meet to Capistrano Valley, which ultimately ended up deciding who won the South Coast League title. “We had an off day, we just need to keep doing what we’ve been doing” said Coach Boss after the tough defeat. Unfortunately for the team it seemed like it wasn’t just one off day. The devastating loss seemed to really take a toll on the team because the Diablos were never able to recover, eventually dropping their final meet of the year to Tesoro, which wasn’t the biggest surprise in the world considering the fact that Tesoro has really had Mission’s number this year. Coach Boss’ reaction to the late season collapse wasn’t a negative one though, “I think this really taught this young team something, every point counts”. He thinks the Boys will be able to learn from this experience and be able come out next year with a different attitude and finish the season all the way to the end. Yes, the two losses to close out the year were disappointing but Mission Viejo all in all had a very solid year finishing with a 5-3-1 record and solid 3-2 record in league play. The team was led by senior leader Brain Annett and sophomore studs: Tyler Weissman, Jon Daniec, and Brock Redondo. All four of these swimmers will compete in CIF and the three sophomores, Tyler, Jon, and Brock are expected to return for their junior years. Hopefully next year will be more of what Mission is used to. With one year under this team’s belt and not a lot of swimmers graduating, except the Diablos to be back to championship form in 2009.