Now well into their season, the swim team has had a strong start with wins from their two meets so far, in addition to participating in one meet that was not scored. The team continues to work hard almost every day as they prepare for upcoming meets and ultimately for the district and state meets.

Senior Sydney Nakagawa has made a substantial impact during her time on the team as she has broken four individual school records (500 Free, 100 Back, 100 Fly, and 200 IM) and two relay records (200 free relay and 400 Free Relay).

“This season my goal is to get the school records in the 50 Free, 100 Free, 200 Free, and 200 IM and then re-break any of the records I previously have,” said Sydney.

Sydney has already re-broken her record for the 500 Free at the St. Helens meet on January 4th and both her 100 Fly and 200 IM records at the Dalles Invite on January 6th. Her other goal for the season is “to make it to [the state] finals in both [her] individual events at state and hopefully get two girls relays out at state again.”

The team is lead by this year’s captains, Sydney Nakagawa, Kiley Russell, Ben Robinson, and Andy Krueger, and head coach, Mikel Rathmann.

The swim team practices six days a week—Monday through Friday from 3:30-4:45 pm—and on Saturdays from 9-11 am at the North Clackamas Aquatic Park.

On weekdays a typical practice includes an hour in the pool and 15 minutes out of the water doing dry land workouts such as ab and core workouts. In the pool, the team has a warm up that lasts between 10-15 minutes and following that they have their main set which normally has a different focus depending on the day.

On Saturday mornings, the team has more availability at the pool so they work on endurance sets during the two hour practice. Before meets the team will work on more technical things such as starts, turns, and relay exchanges.

“My goals for this season are making it to state and being able to walk away from the season happy with the times I swam and the improvements I made within each stroke,” said junior Ben Robinson. “Making state will be tough and unlikely as an individual but I have hope for our relay teams.”

“I hope our girls team can go undefeated since we only lost one meet last year, and be conference champions again,” said Sydney Nakagawa. “We lost a few girls last year but we have a lot of girls coming in this year and the majority are returning. It would also be great to see the boys team go undefeated as well this year since they were so close last year.”

“The team has been training really hard and I can see a lot of improvement in my teammates, especially considering it’s still the beginning of the season,” said Sydney. “Our relays are looking good and people are dropping time so I can’t wait to see how the team does at the end of the season at districts in mid-February.”

The swim team’s next meet is this Saturday, January 13th at Parkrose High School. Good Luck Falcons!