The swim team and its regular practices have started almost a month ago (with the first one having been on November 3rd). During this time the team has been training hard, from the traditional 2-practices in the evening to the additional dry-land workouts and 6 AM swims. And this Tuesday night is our first meet.

The meet will be at home in the natatorium against Westlake. Unfortunately, the race suits have not arrived from shipment yet, so upperclassmen and sophomores will be wearing last year’s race suit with freshmen ostensibly wearing the tightest suit they own. Hopefully, the new ones will be in before the next meet (which will be on the 5th of December against Berea).

For those of you who are not familiar with swimming, this is how a meet usually goes: We arrive about an hour(ish) before the meet to warmup and check which events we are swimming. Spectators arrive later, and (after the national anthem and announcements) the meet begins. There are several areas of swimming, which are distance, sprinting, IM (which is strokes other than Freestyle), and relays (although relays all fall into one of the categories aforementioned). The shortest event is the 50 freestyle (2 laps) and the longest is the 500 freestyle (20 laps, and which, from experience, I can tell you feels just as long as it is).

In the past, Lakewood has shown the most promise with relays. The 200 free and the 400 free are the events that are most likely to be seen at Districts, and even States, at the end of the year. Last year, decade-long records were even broken in terms of relays.

Although many talented seniors left this past year, there are many new students that look to be promising athletes as well. This season looks like it will be a good one.