This past Monday, the boys’ swim and dive team went head to head with Francis Howell High School. Francis Howell won by a slim margin of only three points. Coach Mrs. Jessica Graslie believes that even though the team lost, they still put up a good fight.

“Howell is one of our toughest competitors. We’re on pretty equal ground with them, so I think the boy’s performed really well. Teams are awarded points based on where you place. If we would have had a swimmer take third, or a relay place first and second, we could have made up those points,” Graslie said.

Some of the boys’ struggles on Monday can be attributed to the long string of meets they’ve had in the last week.

“Over the past seven days, they’ve had five meets, which is a lot more than they are used to swimming. Plus, they were at a meet out of town this weekend. Staying in a hotel and being up late wore them out by Monday,” Graslie said.

Freshman Cooper Redington is ready to move past the difficult loss against Howell.

“We had a lot of meets in a row, it was stressful,” Redington said. “We had a good start to the season, so losing to Howell was disappointing. I thought we could have done better, but now we just have to focus on doing better at our next meet.”

Graslie and the rest of the team are hoping to put the loss behind them, and focus on refine small skills that can be used to shave seconds off their times.

Freshman Cameron Zalmanoff knows that getting better will take effort, but is confident in the team’s abilities.

“The biggest thing we need to focus on is practicing and improving our times. It is hard to take off that short amount of time, but we are working our hardest,” Zalmanoff said.

“They need more practice with little things, like starts and turns. If they can really refine those things, they could drop a lot of time,” Graslie said.

The boys will be back in the pool on September 17th at the Howell Tri-meet.