The boys swim season is underway after kicking off on November 13. Cassie Rodriguez, boys and girls swim coach, believes that the beginning of the season serves as an important period of transition for the team.

“We’ve just been trying to use these first couple of weeks to see where everyone is at and to start gearing up to [determine] what our goals are for the rest of the season,” Rodriguez said.

Practices typically last from one to two hours, and take place after school every weekday including Saturdays if there are no meets. Every Wednesday, the team competes in a dual meet against one other school. On December 6, the team swam at their second Woodland Conference dual meet against South Milwaukee and came out victorious.

“We won the meet, and they swam really well,” Rodriguez said. “South Milwaukee has a substantially smaller team than us, so it’s one that you can win pretty easily. Therefore, times aren’t as important. We’re going to focus on race strategy and things like that.”

Last year, the team placed third in the state meet and broke five school records. With the departure of last year’s seniors, the team hopes to achieve the same success with a younger group.

“We had a little bit of a heartbreaking end last year where we could have been runner-up at state,” Rodriguez said. “We want to try to redeem ourselves in other ways this year and find ways to score more points than we did before.” 

For senior Noah Mulvey, the new season is an opportunity to strengthen bonds between team members.

“I think that right now there’s a lot of team spirit, especially coming off of last year where we were a more competitive team and there was more pressure to perform,” Mulvey said. “This season, it’s a lot more laid back and we’re much more focused on having a good time and building that team dynamic.”

This year, seven freshmen joined the team. Over her past seven years of coaching, Rodriguez has watched the team’s size grow significantly. 

“It’s kind of always nice when the incoming freshman outweighs the outgoing seniors in numbers,” Rodriguez said. “But for me, the coolest thing has been that when I took over as the boys’ coach there were six guys on the team, and now I have upwards of 22.”

Aden Wasserman, senior, believes that this year’s freshmen have potential for current and future success. 

“We have a lot of freshmen who are very strong swimmers. They’ve been swimming club for most of their lives,” Wasserman said.

During the Covid pandemic, swimming was one of several activities affected by dropping participation rates. The substantial number of incoming freshmen is a sign that after three years, the team has almost completely recovered from the impact of the pandemic.

“We’re getting back to our pre-Covid numbers. On the boys’ side, I’ve seen [that when] one person comes out, they bring their friends from other teams or other sports,” Rodriguez said. “So I think that has kind of helped build [the team] and bring in more people than I ever would have expected.”