Bwaap! A blare from the speaker goes off as the swimming breaststroke round begins. Behind the diving board, Stella Yang (‘26) prepares herself by shaking out the nerves in her muscles and waiting for the whistle to signal it’s time to mount the board. Once she’s on top of the board, it’s game time and Stella’s adrenaline increases as she dives into the water.

From a young age, Stella started swimming as an afterschool activity and later began doing it competitively. When she joined competitive swimming, being in the pool became not a race but more of a bonding experience with her team. Stella recalls how she felt joining the sport and the ability let loose with this team of swimmers.

“It’s very freeing because you’re floating in the water, and you can go at your own pace,” Stella said. “Even though it’s an individual sport, I like how it’s both an individual thing, but also a team sport. You’re basically always racing against yourself, but then you can also think of it as, ‘Oh, I’m competing with these people as well,’ or you can also think of it as, ‘I feel really supported by this community and they’re helping me and I’m helping them improve.’”

Participating in various swim teams inside and outside of school, Stella strives to build closer relationships with her teammates and create a collaborative atmosphere. Close friend Mirabelle Feng (‘25) commends Stella on her ability to keep a positive composure even when things are stressful.

“​​I’ve never seen Stella upset,” Mirabelle said. “She’s always smiling, fairly cheery or willing to talk and be around people. She’s a really hard worker and really driven. I definitely think her ability to keep smiling even when things are tough is very sweet, endearing and appreciated, especially when I’m also having a hard time and we’re both struggling together in lab or swim.” 

Even when moves, like breaststroke, during competitions don’t go her way, Stella always aims to continue improving and practice as much as she can. Through swim, Stella has learned how to enhance her moves by practicing everyday and pushing through. During a competition in San Diego, she reflects on a change in her race time that helped her confidence grow.

“I was swimming my best events because I qualified for them [but] I wasn’t really expecting to do well, because I wasn’t improving that much,” Stella said. “I just swam my events, did my best, but surprisingly, I swam the 200 breaststroke and I dropped 2 or 3 seconds, which is a pretty significant improvement. It made me happy that I finally improved.”

After swimming for years, Stella wanted to pass on what she has learned to other students, so she applied to work as a swim teacher. By becoming the teacher instead of the student, she’s learned to share her skills and experiences to encourage others. During the summer before senior year, she taught children and adult lessons at a local swimming pool and was motivated to continue teaching after seeing the growth of her students.

“I found it really fun because I was teaching others how to do something that I had been doing most of my life,” Stella said. “Seeing them go from floating to actually swimming was pretty fulfilling. Even for the adults, it was inspiring to see them willing to start at their age. It’s never too late to start.”

After seeing one of her teammates participating in research outside of school, Stella felt she wanted to try something different that would help her explore more academic areas. Stella started doing research, joined a biochemistry group,and went to the lab to gain more hands-on experience. Working in the lab further sparked her interest in scientific topics.

“I do organic synthesis in the lab, and then I’m also able to test my compounds in different biological assays and experiments, which is pretty fun,” Stella said. “These things aren’t things that high schoolers would probably do, so I find that really cool that I’m able to do this and work with instruments that aren’t seen in a high school setting.”

After doing research in the lab, Stella became more interested in taking and exploring science courses. Close friend Ananya Gurushankar (‘26), who met Stella at Welcome Night before freshman year, recognizes Stella’s welcoming presence and has seen firsthand her ability to listen to others since taking multiple science classes together.

“Stella is very easy to talk to,” Ananya said. “I have a lot of classes with her, so if I ever need help and I ask her, I don’t feel stupid because she’s very easy to complain to or talk to. We talk about our classes. We took Organic Chemistry together and then sometimes we talk about Honors Human Anatomy and Physiology (HAPY) because we like to review together, but also we talk about new boba places or new restaurants too.”

Mathematics teacher Chris Davies, who taught Stella in AP Statistics, applauds her ability to let loose during class and enjoy her time even within a studious environment.

“Stella has a serious side, is dedicated to her scholarship, but also a silly side,” Davies said. “She has a sweatshirt, and it says LA on it, and I mistakenly assumed that that was her nickname because I thought it was the last two letters of her name. Then, I noticed she was sitting next to Ananya, so now I call them La and Ya. When she wears the sweatshirt, I do it even more, and she hasn’t gotten mad at me yet. Stella is very forgiving and kind and even laughs at terrible jokes.”

Behind Stella’s contributions, whether it be in research and swimming, is a journey of persistence, trial-and-error and enjoyment of her work.

“In swimming, when I wasn’t really improving, I hoped I would,” Stella said. “In research, when all these experiments aren’t working, you feel like you’re constantly troubleshooting. When you read papers, all you’re seeing are their successes, but you don’t really see what’s behind that and all the trials that came before. Going through that process of trial and error can be a bit difficult, but swimming taught me to persevere.”