Water splashes every which way, arms dig and legs kick through the water, as swim team prepares for an exciting season of swim events! Each member of swim team dedicates their time to long practices, where they spend hours—on weekdays from 3:15 to 5:00—exercising and improving their swimming skills in laps and relays. Through much time and effort, swim team works to ready themselves for the upcoming swim events.

Splashing into spring of 2016, swim team has noticed a few changes from last year’s squadron. Senior Alexander Nider addressed how they “have a new coach, and there’s a lot less people.” Although the team may have fewer members this year, they are still a strong team, striving to improve their swimming skills at each practice.

Swim team members expressed their excitement for the upcoming season of swim events. Junior Alessandra Vukovics is “excited to compete against other schools and have fun with my classmates,” and as for Nider: “beating my fifty free record, and trying to lose twenty-three seconds fly.”

The members of swim team have managed to create a closely-knit environment, with students who are not only teammates, but friends. “My favorite part of swim is hanging out with the team and cheering people on when they’re swimming breaststroke, because then you get to yell at their faces when they come out of the water,” junior Megan Oakes said. The members of swim team work to help each other improve, and push each other to do their best.

Swim team has much to look forward to this season. With swim events right around the corner, they have a lot of work to do in preparation. “[Our team will] warm up for about thirty minutes before we start in the pool,” Senior Lauren Presley said. “…We practice diving and swimming and then we start.”

With all the hard work they put in, swim team still experienced some difficulty. Junior Kiale Garcia Walter said that “the hardest thing about swimming is stuff like, your arms get really tired, and you kick a lot, and you accidentally kick other people, which makes you feel bad.”

A variety of swim events await swim team.There’s long-distance and there’s sprinting and there’s the four different strokes, freestyle, butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke, junior Kayla Torbit said.

Swim team may be fun, but putting in the effort can be tiring. “Oh God. Fly! Any sort of fly workout” is the most tiring, according to Nider. Oakes said “the most difficult part of swim is that you are hungry all the time, which is a pain.”

With hours of practice, swim team will soon be ready to attend their first swim meet. Through hard work and much effort, swim team will dive into the upcoming season of swim events.