THE LAST SEASON: SENIOR SWIMMING

With the school year coming to an end it's important to recognize the hard work that goes into competing in sports. Our school provides many sports and one of the lesser known sports our school has is swim.This year there are only four seniors in total from both the boys and girls team. One of the reasons for this is because our school’s swim team is joint with Williamsburg’s swim team. With that being said, this has led to a few  annoyances.

THE CCA-WILLIAMSBURG TEAM CELEBRATING AFTER A WIN; PHOTO BY CODY SHERLOCK

A big one that was brought up was having to wake up early to get out to Williamsburg before school and not getting back till late. With this, having to organize your time around the sport can become quite difficult. Students in addition to the busy schedule of swimming have to find time for completing homework and spending time with family and friends. And on top of all of this they still have to find the time to get enough sleep. With all of this, despite trying to stay on top of all of it students, while trying to avoid it, can become burnt out very fast. The advice given to anyone joining the team is that even with these annoyances it's still worth it you get to meet new people and make friends that you wouldn't have met any other way from Williamsburg. One thing that was able to help with this is the vans that were driving out to Williamsburg giving more time for homework. But all of it's worth it when you can celebrate your achievements from improving times to swimming new events with everyone on the team.

Essentially, everyone on the team is all working towards the same goal of getting better. The events some of our current seniors enjoy are the 200 IM (Henry Davidson), 500 free (Calvin Monohon), 50 free (Tyler Patrick) and the 100 Breast Stroke (Cody Sherlock).There has also been a lot of improvement over the years with Monohon dropping 24 seconds in the 500 free just this year, along with getting a varsity letter all 4 years of high school. Monohon is a senior with a ton of experience, “Swimming  was a thing I did back when I was like 5 and towards the end of my rec center swimming days one of the teachers was a swim coach for a club named IFLY.” Monohon went on to explain how that interaction with an outside swim coach got him to where he is today: “he [the IFLY swim coach] offered to my mom that I do club swimming. I did that until high school…” He went on to say that “Last summer to early fall was the last time I did club swimming.” Monohon then talked about why he stayed in swimming all these years, “The reason I stayed was because it was the only sport I liked and the only sport I was truly good at.” With Monohon doing swimming for so long it comes with a lot of challenges to work through with his advice being “Don't give up and always keep fighting because this is a sport that is going to heavily bring you down and keep you tired.” he continued to say that “You will always feel uncomfortable during practice and during an event in a meet so you have to find a way to push through that. Once you do, it will be a lot easier doing hard work.” As a fellow senior on the swim team, the end season always brings up a lot of emotions. You’ll go from going to see all these people every day to not being able to see half of them that go to Williamsburg. In addition, it’s also difficult knowing there's a chance you might not see them again.

This leads to a bitter sweet moment because personally I am extremely thankful for the opportunity to meet everyone but it also makes it very difficult to leave. Overall, in the end it's all worth it for the friends you make and the hard work you're able to put in, even on the hard days.