Last Thursday Swim dove into their season with success at its first meet. They faced off against Redondo and North for the first time of the season and although they didn’t win the competition– getting 2nd place, were still proud of how they started off.

Hannah Kim (10) said “starting off in the middle will really help the team so there’s motivation to do better and not just relax because we’re ahead and it gives us fight knowing we aren’t last either.” They know they have a lot of work to do in order to get the results they want but seeing as they only had 3 weeks to practice prior to the meet they feel confident going into the season.

Their coach was the most impressed of all as Ryan Scarcliff said “I didn’t really expect much for their first meet, everyone is still rusty, but they came out and were able to get 2nd place. I just told everyone to do their best and I think they did that. I can’t ask for much more.”

What the team did well was the motivation they gave each other. Michael Lusher (12) said “each person did really well cheering each other on which many people think got them most of the wins”. For them, a lot of the competition is mental, being focused enough to produce the outcomes they want. They prepared themselves for this by hyping each other up and listening to music before hand to calm nerves.

The team is just awaiting their scores to see both how they didn’t and how they can improve moving on. They want to be able to use these scores as a baseline for the season so they are only getting better from now on.

For now they are practicing dives, turns, and starts, but with these scores they can focus on improving time as well as fixing things they may have gotten disqualified for.

Everyone is optimistic going into the season as they really believe they’ll be super successful.