By Reyes Angeles.

   Swim students broke personal records at the swim meet on Oct. 25-26 with two students breaking actual records.

   “I was really, really anxious, and me and my coach set up a system to where, if I breathed and I saw her, because she’s on the sidelines, she would give me, like, a thumbs up or a thumbs down, if I’m on record. But towards the end, she kind of just kept giving me thumbs down just to see how far I’d go,” senior Landon Schroeder said. “I was really happy to see because I beat it by like 10 seconds.”

   Swimmers time their percentages which is the amount of strength and stamina put into a section of the race and not sprint through the entire race to not slow down.

   “If you swim with anger, like you try to really just push it, push and push, helps sometimes,” Landon said. “But in a lot of cases of those more detailed races, if you swim angry, your technique is gone, and if your technique is bad, you don’t go as fast.”

   The students always give something to the team, whether it’s points or encouragement for those in the water.

   “So they compete in four events, which two could be individual, and then the other two can be relays, or they could do one individual and three relays,” swim teacher Kelly Fuller said. “So whether they’re doing an individual event with swimmer dive they are still a huge part of scoring for the competition.”

   The students attend daily practices at the McMurry natatorium. The travel time cuts into their practice time.

   “They’ve done really well with being understanding, because we don’t have our own facilities, and we borrow facilities,” Fuller said. “So just being flexible with when we can use the pool time or weight room time and stuff like that.”

   Every student has their best events. Sometimes the stroke or how they are able to stay focused in the water.

   “My greatest achievement would have to be me finally finding the stroke I’m best at,” senior Breeana Ortega. “I practiced a lot with it and the set was hard. My greatest challenge in keeping my breathing under control, I try to calm down or swim faster.”