Practice begins with a 300-500 yard warm-up, then goes on to work on the pulling and kicking aspects of swimming. Next, to narrow the focus, the swimmers do four sets of 100-yard swims focusing on speed, endurance, technique and breathing while being timed. They must do each 100-yard swim in 130 seconds. Lastly, the girls cool down by swimming 200-300 yards. In total, this practice is about 4,000 yards.

According to Coach Erin Thurston, this is a normal practice for the girls swim team.

“For girls who swim year-round this isn’t a difficult practice, but for girls who don’t swim year-round 4,000 yards is difficult,” said Coach Thurston.

Coach Thurston tries to make the timed parts of practice as challenging as possible.

“There are parts of practice which are hard for the majority of the girls,” said Coach Thurston.

In addition to these practices, some swimmers take on additional practices. Swimmers such as junior Alison Strickler and freshman Danielle Cox who, according to Coach Thurston, consistently win their events must be committed to the sport and possess a high level of dedication.

“Strickler wins anything I put her in,” said Coach Thurston. “She goes to two practices a day and has extreme dedication.”

This dedication and hard work has proven to pay off for the girls swim team this year. They have won seven of their eight swim meets, including their meet on Monday, Jan. 23, against St. Charles High School at the Rec Plex. The final score of the meet was 140-22.

“It was interesting because St. Charles only had four swimmers, so it was only us swimming in many events or else they only had one person in an event,” said Coach Thurston.

The swim team’s next meet will be Monday, Jan. 30, against St. Charles West at the St. Charles YMCA.