Despite losing their first two meets of the season, the Oak Harbor boys swim team and coach Erika Miller remain confident things will improve as the season progresses.

On Dec. 5, the Wildcats lost 123-60 on the road at Kamiak before returning to John Vanderzicht Memorial Pool Dec. 7 to face Lake Stevens.

Several of the Oak Harbor swimmers turned in strong performances against the Vikings and the team showed a lot of improvement, but the Wildcats still came up on the short end of a 108-75 score

“It’s still pretty early and a lot of us are still out of shape,” senior Cameron Spence said. “Everybody is trying really hard and we’re still coming together as a team. I think we’ll definitely get there by state.”

Spence had a good meet, finishing second in the 100-meter butterfly and 200-meter individual medley. He was also a member of the second-place finishing 200-meter medley relay team and teamed with John Hu, Zach Johnson and Spencer Livermore to win the 200-meter freestyle relay in a time of 2:01.40.

Johnson was also on the 200-meter medley relay team and finished third in the 50 and 100-meter freestyle events.

“I was talking to one of the other swimmers on the Lake Stevens team and he was saying he swims a 49 for the 100-yard freestyle. That’s incredibly fast,” Johnson said.

Livermore placed second in the 100-meter backstroke in a time of 1:14.59 and sophomore Chris Rankin was second in the 100-meter breaststroke with a clocking of 1:31.43.

Sophomore Byce Vagt was the only other Wildcat to win an event, capturing the 500-meter freestyle in a time of 6:37.82.

“I thought I did pretty well in the race,” he said. “I thought my time was going to be around 6:45, but 6:37 is really good for me.”

Vagt was in a hurry and didn’t have a lot of time to talk as he had to immediately turn around and swim in the next event, the 200-meter freestyle relay.

“Lake Stevens has a pretty strong team, but it was a fun meet today,” Miller said. “We have to get some guys feeling a little better, we’re fighting a little bit of colds, but we’re doing good. Even though we lost the first meet to Kamiak, John Hu got his state cut time. That was really great.”

Oak Harbor hosts Meadowdale and Lynnwood at 3 p.m. on Tuesday.