Mai Cachila

Preparing to dive in the pool, junior Parker Huang waits for the 100-yard breaststroke to begin at the CPHS v. Leander v. Vista Ridge meet on Sep. 21. The boys swim and dive team finished in second place at the meet. “I also try to be positive and encourage everyone on the team,” Huang said. “I love the team. I love the people on the team. It’s more team based, so if you don’t necessary do well at a swim meet you’re still having fun cause you’re hanging out with your friends.

After being hyped by his teammates, he moves closer to the starting block to prepare for the start of the race. He looks back to his teammates as they cheer for him in the background. He then puts his goggles on and gets in a ready position. He hears the countdown finish and the horn blare. He dives in to begin his race.

The swim and dive team started their season with new head coach Kyla Garguilo, who previously taught and coached in St. Johns, Florida, after losing their last head coach to a medical emergency.

“Our coach gives us real workouts for practice,” senior Brooke Kramer said. “She gives us good workouts that are actually effective and knows what she’s doing and she can command the attention of the whole team. Past coaches that we have had could not command the respect of the whole team, so people were less likely to try and do the sets to their best effort. Now everyone is improving because they are more motivated to try.”

According to Kramer, practices begin with stretches led by captains, then freestyle swim. They also practice specific strokes like backstroke, breaststroke and butterfly for a short period of time. The practices vary per day whether they will focus on sprints, short distance swimming or long distance swimming. Practices are held Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at Milburn Park and Buttercup pool. On Thursday, the team focuses on dry land practice, which is out-of-the-water practice, where they develop their strength with Calisthenics.

“Calisthenics helps in the water because it builds muscles and makes you stronger,” Kramer said. “So we work on technique while we’re swimming, but building the muscles can help you be stronger as you use that technique.”

According to junior Savanna Williamson, swim meets are the way that the team bonds with one another. The team also makes it a priority to have people cheering for every person that competes in an event so they can feel supported during their race.

“Getting to hang out with my teammates is the most fun part about the meets,” Williamson said. “I have really bonded with everyone this year and everyone is so nice and great so having meets is a good way to meet your teammates that you didn’t know and so having those really helped us get closer as a team.”

Each meet varies, but typically relay events score 10 points for the team and individual events score three to five points; the team competes in 12 events per meet. The events are also have separated scores for the boys and girls teams. Whichever team has the most points at the end of all the races wins the meet. 

“We are all super supportive of one another,” Williamson said. “It motivates people to try because they know all of their teammates are watching them and cheering them on, so I think it helps us a lot. At the end of the day, it is not just an individual sport, it is more of a team sport. Having your team there really helps even though you’re the only one swimming.”

Junior Parker Huang swims on a club team at Nitro Swimming, along with being a member of the school swim and dive team, and says that club swimming focuses on individual based performance rather than team performance.

“Club [swimming] is more of an individual thing,” Huang said. “It focuses more on yourself and really just trying to work hard on your own thing. The coach doesn’t really care about the benefit of the team because they focus on how someone does as an individual.”

The team focuses more on team-oriented performance and unifying everyone together as a program, Huang said. The performance of an individual is not as important, as club and the swimmers should be able to focus more on the team aspect of swimming and having fun with teammates.

“We are all really close and we work together well as a team,” Kramer said. “If you have a race there is always going to have at least one person behind your lane cheering you on. We even have had other teams tell us that they wish their team was as close as ours, and it’s such a fun environment to be in.”

The team will next compete at the AISD Invitational at the U.T. Swim Center on Oct. 27.