As the competitive race was about to start and people were rolling in to watch what the race would result in, swimmers on the school’s team started to kick off by slapping their hamstrings to warm up for their race. On the long whistle, the swimmers started to take their positions on the blocks and wait for the race to swiftly start, nervously but also releasing a sense of confidence. “Take Your Marks,” on the starters command, the swimmers took their starting position and when the starting signal sounded, the race began.
The competitive swimming and diving teams contain many students with astounding abilities that make them stand out amongst many other students. With many tournaments and regionals going on, they are excelling in them, because of the training that they do with their team, and thanks to the help of Marie Saunders, an assistant coach, Jake Kinzbach, the diving coach and the head coach Kate Sweeso.
“When you get to coach, you get to sort of impact kids in a different way,” said Sweeso, “It is like a different medium. It is very different from my classroom because I get to see the kids for four years, you know, watch them grow up, watch them learn and watch them become adults. And I get to teach them life lessons that I think really matter and really have value to them long term.”
While the swimming and diving teams are doing very well in their competitions, it takes a lot of time for them to actually get good and train to win competitions or tournaments, because of this, that practice time for these athletes are very essential for their process of winning and actually being able to compete well, even for athletes like senior Ava Labrose.
“We practice every day before school at 6 a.m. and practicing depends on what day it is. Sometimes we go to a weight room, sometimes we swim and sometimes we do both,” said Labrose.
Swimming is a competitive sport so it does get hard at times, but not only for the reason of competitiveness, but also because of school factors for swimmers like junior Jason Wang.
“I definitely have to say just the commitment to sport itself, is what is hardest about swimming.” said Wang. “I know a couple of my teammates have to go to club practice too, and it’s just like two practices a day and each practice is around like two hours, so it’s like a huge time commitment for just like managing homework and swimming at the same time.”
Swimming can get hard at some points but it definitely usually is a sport that can bring a lot of commitment and also a lot of accomplishments, like beating other schools during championships and more.
“ We have had an awesome season. The boys took home the team championship in the Greater Houston tournament against Kingwood and the Woodlands, Atascosita, Seven Lakes, Taylor and a bunch of those teams. And the girls took 5th, they beat Taylor. The girls are fantastic too, so we just had an awesome season. We have got a ton of depth, a ton of talent. They are working really hard. They are excited, very positive and it has ultimately been really solid here,” said Sweeso.
Many significant changes have happened to the swimming team this year, mainly a lot of new freshmen coming in and expanding the team, but there has also been more returning students than last year.
“We did not have a huge graduating class last year so we have a lot of returns, so I think this year is sort of building on the success of last year. A lot of kids that went to state last year are still on the team and so they’ve got to now bring that energy of like this is where we want to go. This is what we want to do. I think actually this year has been the first year, we are not starting over this year. This is kind of a peak year for us,” said Sweeso.
With many significant changes from the last year, there are also some competitors that might also qualify as a significant change from this year compared to the last.
“The district level 7 boys are really good and the Jordan girls are really good.” said Sweeso, “So we’re going to have some stiff competition. I think what we’ve got really going for us is depth. We have a lot of talent, so that’s kind of where we’re going to capitalize on and we also have speed too, so we’ll see. We need good competition because it forces the kids to up their game, and they swim faster. It brings out the best in them, when we have good competition.”
