With a Splash of Success

The girls swim and dive team closes their season with victories at GAC’s and state

Maddy Mabray, Staff Reporter|February 25, 2021

Senior diver Abigail Wolf concentrate on perfecting her turns. During the season, Wolf broke the 6-dive school record with 279 points.

With the girls swim and dive team coming to a close, they headed off to GAC’s Feb. 9 and 10, and state Friday Feb. 19. Their season ended with a 4-3 win loss record as the girls pushed their hardest to improve their previous times. In the weeks leading up to GAC’s the swimmers focused on tightening the ends of their performance, perfecting turns and strengthening starts. For the divers, they ensured their dive list was in order about a week before GAC’s, and in the days building up to them went through each dive day by day to fix and fine tune each dive to make sure it was eligible for competition. Sophomore diver Alice Landry felt the intensity of the days before GAC’s.

“There’s definitely a lot more emotions. Tears, happiness, frustration, you name it….the second someone gets up on the board, the whole room goes to silence and then the second their head pops out of the water everyone starts yelling and cheering” Landry said.

Despite the struggles COVID-19 brought, the girls stayed adaptive and ready to do whatever was needed. Throughout the season, many girls were quarantined and unable to attend practices. Freshman Kyndall Steinmeyer witnessed and experienced these effects.

“

There’s definitely a lot more emotions. Tears, happiness, frustration, you name it….the second someone gets up on the board, the whole room goes to silence and then the second their head pops out of the water everyone starts yelling and cheering

— Landry

“When you have to quarantine for two weeks, it gets you out of shape. When [someone] on the team got quarantine, you would have to swim events you didn’t normally swim.” Steinmeyer said.

Junior Sarah Percy was excited about the season regardless of the difficulties present, and swam her best time by eight seconds in the 200 IM.

“My most exciting moment of the season was watching two of my teammates, Abigail Wolf and Xime Avila, break school records and listening to the rest of the team go crazy!” Percy said.

Sophomore Xime Avila broke the record she set as a freshman in the 200 Freestyle twice this season, settling for a new record of 2:01:92. Diver Abigail Wolf broke the 6-dive record with 279 points in a meet against St. Charles Jan. 13, and now holds both of the diving records at FHC. Xime Avila placed second place in the 200 free at GAC’s and first in the 500. Both girls moved on to compete in state where Avila placed 18th and Wolf placed 7th.

Overall, the girls performance this season proved strong, and sophomore Lianna Durbin is already looking to next year, hoping to place in next season’s GAC through her training with a club team in the off season.

“I was most proud of this season [in] seeing the team come together, and despite everything with COVID-19, we all worked together to make things less difficult and stressful for everyone.”