Splashing Towards Success

Swimming is a powerful mixture of endurance, technique, and mental toughness. From the first splash to the final stroke, swimmers push their limits. The Polson Pirate Swim Team consists of fifteen swimmers with a variety of skill levels, from athletes in their first seasons to those who have been swimming their whole lives. In swimming you can race four strokes: freestyle, butterfly, backstroke, and breaststroke. A swimmer can also swim many different distances; during the high school season an athlete can compete in a race as far as 500 meters and as short as 50 meters. Swim meets have relays where four swimmers will race the same distance of one stroke or each swimmer will swim the same distance using a different stroke, called a medley. At practice, swimmers do a long warm-up and swim between 3800 and 5000 meters per practice. It usually takes between one and a half to two hours. All in all, Polson High School swimmers spend a lot of time in the water to build their skills.

Swim Coach Morgan Zimmer sums up her coaching philosophy as: “I am not just building athletes, I am building people.” She wants to be able to make an impact on their lives even if it is just a small one. Many players also build their skills by training outside the swim season. Anastasia (Ana) Hertz, a sophomore, said, “I lap swim on my own outside of the season, but I used to be on the club team.” Teague McElwee, a junior, said, “Club practice is a shorter warm up with longer, more aerobic and endurance-based sets” because the races are longer than in high school competitions. Club swimming tends to include longer races, even up to a mile. 

To prepare for a race, many swimmers have a pre-race routine to keep them calm for their competition. Many swimmers listen to music or do dynamic stretches to get their bodies moving. Amelia Stene, a sophomore, says she tries to keep it positive before a race to maintain a good mindset. Coach Zimmer says it is important to “remind swimmers that it is a mental game.” When swimmers get in a bad mindset at practice, she will tell them to swim and just feel the water to relax and regain a calm mindset.  Zimmer believes that the sport requires a strong mentality to help the swimmers through the battles it can bring. 

At the state swim meet in Great Falls, the boys secured the third place spot trailing only one point from the second place team from Havre. The individual medals include McElwee with first place in both the 100-yard backstroke and freestyle; Truman Sawyer with third in the 200 IM and 6th in the 100 butterfly; Lachlan Sloan with third in the 50 freestyle and fourth in the 200 freestyle; Boden Sloan with third in the 100 freestyle; Hayden Ricks with fifth in the 100 breaststroke and sixth in the 100 freestyle; Isaac Kinnick with fifth in the 50 freestyle. The boys also placed in many relays including second in the 400 freestyle, third in the 200 freestyle, and third in the 200 medley. The girls also had many individual placers with Amelia Stene fourth in the 100 butterfly and sixth in the 50 freestyle and Grace Olsen fourth in the 100 breaststroke. The girls’ team also placed in a couple of relays with fourth 200 freestyle, sixth in the 400 freestyle, and sixth in the 200 medley.