Judging from their performance in San Antonio this past weekend, Stratford's swimming and diving team is well on their way to achieving its end-of-season goal.

The Spartans had a huge weekend at the 2007 Alamo Holiday Championships, taking three individual wins and a fourth-place finish from a 40-school, 420-athlete meet.

"We were even missing a few of our top scorers," Spartans coach Michael Hoskovec said. "Our goal is to advance as many people through to the regional and state meets as we can, Last year we took nine kids to the state meet and we're hoping to improve on that this year."

The fourth-place finish was the highest yet for a Hoskovec-coached team; he's in his fifth year at Stratford.

Steadily improving junior Michael Bishop won two events and set the Josh Davis Natatorium record in the 100-yard IM with a time of 53.24. Bishop's other win was the 100-yard breaststroke with a time of 1:00.08.

Sophomore Lilly Marrow won the 100 IM (1:00.75).

"The team is definitely shaping up to be the best team that I've had in my time here," Hoskovec said. "We just went through what we call our happy swim week, which is swimming a massive amount of yardage, and we came out swimming really well at the end of it despite being warm out."

Stratford swims against Memorial Saturday morning.

Hoskovec doesn't keep track of wins and losses, instead saying "to me it's just about swimming fast at the end of the season."

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