Borisoff Follows Father’s Lead in Becoming Agoura Standout

What’s this? A Borisoff who doesn’t play tennis?

Lauren Borisoff isn’t the first in her family to favor a swimming pool over the hard court, where younger sister Brooke ranks among the region’s best girls’ tennis players.

Lauren, a senior at Agoura High, followed in the footsteps of her father, Brett, as an aquatics enthusiast.

“Swimming’s been my only sport my whole life,” Lauren said. “I tried a couple different [sports], but I just really liked swimming. I never even really tried tennis.”

Lauren emulated her father, a former water polo player and swimmer in high school and at Occidental College in the mid-1970s.

“When they were real young, I taught them to swim,” Brett said of his daughters. “I tried to push them both into swimming, and Lauren loved it. Brooke hated it.”

Brooke, a junior, has won the last three Marmonte League singles titles and is a highly ranked player on the junior circuit.

Lauren has gained her measure of athletic and academic success as the Chargers’ top swimmer and a future member of the Cornell University swim team. She will attend the Ivy League school in the fall, after graduating among the top 10 in her class.

She is competing this week in the Southern Section Division I swim championships at Belmont Plaza in Long Beach.

Lauren placed second in the 200- and 500-yard freestyles, and anchored 200 medley and 400 free relays to third place in the Marmonte League finals last week. She was named the team’s most valuable swimmer award.

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The La Canada girls’ swim team competes in the Division III finals today without a key contributor to its fifth-place showing last year.

Junior Alyssa Chin, who placed second in the 100 backstroke and fourth in the 200 individual medley as a sophomore, has competed solely for her club team this season.

“It kind of hurt a little bit,” La Canada Coach Mary Holt said. “But I look at Alyssa a little differently. She might be able to qualify for Olympic trials, and one of the things I wouldn’t want to do is stand in the way of that.”

Holt requires all swimmers--even accomplished club members--to practice with the La Canada team at least twice a week. That was a factor in Chin’s decision not to compete for the Spartans.

“The club coaches want swimmers to just be able to get up on the starting blocks at a meet and score points for us,” Holt said. “I said no. That’s not a team.”

Holt is flexible about when swimmers practice.

La Canada offers on-campus workouts at 14 times--before school, early afternoon, after school and evening sessions.

“[The variety of workouts] takes care of kids’ other activities, appointments, things like that,” Holt said. “When the kids really do fulfill their end, it works out really well.”

That is apparent.

The girls’ and boys’ teams each finished with 5-1 Rio Hondo League records.

The girls have relied on seniors Shannon Stoddard and Michelle Chan. Sophomore Matt Yang is the boys’ standout.