Making a Splash at State: Girls Swim Team Makes a Comeback

By Kegan Huckabone

The girls swim team is planning to take the title for the first time in many years. After getting second last year, the girls have started preparing for their comeback season.

The Trojan Torch sat down with Head Coach, Diego Henao, to see how the girls are preparing for this season.

Diego explained the process of the early parts of the season. He mentioned conditioning, and how many kids have taken a break. He said “...Once they come back they’ve got to work on endurance. We train less, but we concentrate on quality.”

Now that the swim team has finished conditioning, they’ve gone into “racing mode.” They have won all three swim meets they’ve attended, and are starting to gauge how successful they might be throughout the season.

“It’s like the stock market, sometimes it goes up and down. Sometimes we have a really good group of girls that join the high school team, or we don’t,” says Henao. “It depends. That’s just one part. We may have a great team, but at the same time, other teams may have a better team. It fluctuates.”

With a great chance of winning the state title, the girls are eager to get out there and prove themselves.

We sat down with seniors Abigail Eaton and Sophia Chatzigiannidis to get their input on the girls’ swim team. 

“I’ve just seen how hard work can help you get anything you want,” says Chatzigiannidis. “...Every single girl has worked really hard to get where they are.”

As the only seniors, Eaton and Chatzigiannidis, are eager to see how the team will do.

“We’re trying to go for the win this year,” Eaton says. “I think there’s enough of us and there are so many skill sets that have been brought to the table, that I think we may have the chance.”

The girls are more than prepared to win, regardless of what happens, Henao explains to me what winning really means.

“I don’t tell them that we’re gonna win, but that is the goal,” Henao says. “I explain to them what it means to win. It’s to improve, to drop time, to have fun, to better their strokes, to learn more about the sport. That is winning. I believe that they are getting close to that. 

With the season barely underway, the Jenks Swim Team plans to continue training and preparing to steal the state title in late February. Make sure to go out and support the team! To find the schedule for future swim meets, click here.