The men’s and women’s swimming teams won their season opener against North Central College on Oct. 14. The men won with a score of 150-24, while the women won with a score of 174-24. With their victory over North Central, the team is looking forward to the rest of the season with a high energy engulfing both teams.
“I feel like the first meet of the season went really well,” junior Bella Casanovas said. “I feel like we had a really good team atmosphere going into the meet, and I feel like everybody was really excited to get going and get racing and see all the work that we’ve put into practices and just seeing what we can do.”
After an impressive season last year for both teams, they hope to go back to back with being conference champions and raise their expectations.
“We would love to see another conference championship, but I think just keeping the morale up and continuing to work hard would definitely be one of expectations,” junior Annabella Valenti said.
Despite recent success for both teams, there is still some improvement that could be made. One of those improvements, in order to keep morale high, is to look at competitions one race at a time.
“You can’t let that race determine the next race for you,” junior Kacper Cebula said. “There were a few instances where I swam a race and it didn’t go as well as I wanted, but it still went well. I had to quickly turn around and realize that the race was over. We need to focus on this next race.”
Part of the reason why the swim teams have been successful recently is due to the work that is done outside of the season. During the off-season, it’s important to stay fit and healthy in order to be competitive. The off-season is also an important time to build team relationships before the season begins.
“During the offseason, we had some captain’s practices that we had like a couple of weeks before the season,” Casanovas said. “I feel like that was a really good time for us to bond a little bit more since it was just the captain’s leaving it so you’re able to get to know our captains and interact with the new team coming in. And I think it was like a good way for us just to get back into swimming and start to feel more comfortable again.”
Focusing ahead, there are a lot of goals and ambitions athletes on both the men’s and women’s teams want to accomplish throughout the season, making the season more competitive and fun.
“I’m hoping that I can swim faster than I did at conference last year and improve my times, and then hopefully I’ll be able to score some points to help our team place better too,” Casanovas said.
The swim team’s next meet is on Friday, Oct. 27 against Monmouth.