On February 12, news came out that the girls’ 400 m free relay team won first place at the 6A Regional competition taking place in Laredo, Texas.
The relay race, similar to the track relay, is a competition in which swimmers compete as a team but are restricted to each leg having a specific swim. The order of the swimmers is backstroke, butterfly, breaststroke, and freestyle. Freestyle simply means that the last leg can not repeat any of the past mentioned swim styles therefore they might do the classic row swim that most learn.
Senior Sophie said, “For me as a senior when we finally won it just felt like everything was worth it. It was an amazing feeling, it felt so good because I knew my team was the one that really helped and they were the ones behind it.”
Reminiscing on how the year has gone is an important method to recognize what improvements or faults have been made up to a point. It is especially useful as an athlete when thinking about what next step should be taken to improve for the next season.
“Way better,” said junior Samika, “I quit [swim] club this year so I no longer practice during the afternoon, and I have gotten faster. I could have been faster, like my freestyle was there but my backstroke can definitely improve.”
When asked about how they felt about their achievements from this year they all responded with a variation of decent and good. They felt as if it was an on-average year with no huge change in results.
Junior Ashlynn said, “I felt pretty good but at the beginning, I kept adding time. It was hard for me because I was scared I wouldn’t drop time this year. Thankfully at Regionals I gave it everything and I dropped 5 seconds which was amazing. In my relay I dropped time little by little but I never got to where I wanted until Regional.”