The swim team has started their season with different types of athletes leading their team. The squad has been practicing everyday after school for multiple events and meetings.
Junior Monday Spangler has been swimming for three years since she was a freshman, and is continuing with the team this year. She claims, “my season has been going good so far and I won my first breaststroke race last week.”
Spangler shared that for practices, swimmers get there “around 2:30 and get in the pool to set everything up.” Then their coach passes out a sheet of paper of what to do for warm ups and then the “more intense laps.”
She says, “my goal for this season is to get my breaststroke time down from a 1 min 25 sec to a 1 min and 15 sec time because it will show a lot of progress from the start.” Before she swims, this swimmer usually thinks about “motivational thoughts” before she swims and tells herself “I can do it” because there is no worry to really have.
Breaststroke is Spangler’s best stroke because her time for that is the fastest and she “enjoys this stroke over any other.” Normally every Thursday Spangler goes to an outside trainer that helps her with “stroke technique” and before the season starts she does “high school prep swim.”
Senior Michael O’Leary has been swimming for about 10 years and has “improved immensely by practicing a lot.” O’Leary is on a club team as well as the highschool team, so he practices for both.
O’Leary says, “My season has been going really well. For my club team, I just qualified for this really cool meet called Spring Cup, so I am very happy about that. For high school, we have only had one meet so far but I got the 2IM record for our school, which makes me super proud.”
This athlete shares, “Everyday I go to my high school practice for about an hour and a half, then I go to my club practice which is about 2 hours and 30 minutes. I do this everyday besides Sundays, but I really enjoy it and it doesn’t really get old for me since I am doing something I love.”
His goal for the club team is to “get a short time for breaststroke.” For the high school team his goals are to just “have fun with the team and build new relationships.”
