Splash! This is the noise that you hear just after the three o’clock announcement every day in the Hoffman Estates Natatorium, November until February. Swimmers and divers jump into the clear water ready to practice their sport. While swimming can be challenging, it is mostly a blast.
“It’s fun, but it’s hard,” said Cameron Morris-Duncan, sophomore. “I think it’s the difficulty that makes every day a challenge and that’s what makes it great.” The sport is not just tough, though; it is also one that offers lessons.
“Swimming is a great sport because it teaches you how to work hard along with [providing] discipline,” said Marty Stolarz, sophomore. “If you add on a race it’s like I’ll [reach] the next time, I’ll [reach] the next time,” said Stolarz, sophomore, highlighting the lesson of goal setting.
Lena Banaszewski, team manager, said she believes swimming is a good first sport to learn and it offers an opportunity to make friends. It is also an advantage when teams are supportive of each other.
“Swimming is more of an individualized sport so traditionally people are more about themselves. This team is more about each other,” said Jason Guessert, frosh-soph coach, showing how the team is a more social environment rather than individualized than it usually is. “They feed off of each other to accomplish their individual goals.” Setting goals and looking forward is also another common theme.
“I think we are currently at a stepping stone towards where we can be. and I think performance wise between frosh-soph [have] done pretty well. We’ve won a couple of meets at the varsity level [as well],” said Adam Longo, varsity coach. Going forward, the team will face additional challenges which will only help them grow as a team.
“We’re going to be in a new [division] next year so, that’s a pretty large change and we could have a new beginning,” said Morris-Duncan, adding that this will be an advantage.
Beyond the challenges associated with competition, Ben Nguyen, freshman, said the amount of people who are willing to come every day and work hard makes swimming more fun, focusing more on the community surrounding the sport, expanding the focus from just to swimming to the people as well.
“It is cool meeting everyone having a blast swimming sets and swimming at meets,” said Sebastian Suchocki, freshman, who elaborated on how he enjoys being a part of the swimming community.
Morris-Duncan also said that “the way we all work together and just the community that we have is amazing.”
Coach Longo added, “We’re really trying to create something special.”
