Swim Now, Breathe Later

Brennan Lee, Ranger Review Reporter

With the start of spring sports, Lewis-Palmer men’s swimming has started up. So far five meets have happened, three dual meets, an invite, and a relays meet. LP has faced Arapaho, Heritage, and Littleton at the Arapaho Relays meet, Coronado, Air Academy, and DCC. LP beat Coronado 107-79, beat DCC 105-81, and placed third in the Arapaho Relays. LP also swam against Air Academy and won 188-122. LP also participated in the Arapaho Invite and placed third. With twenty-one swimmers and three divers, LP has been doing pretty well for itself this season.

Swimming includes many events ranging from sprints to distance. Diving either dives 6 dives in a meet or 11. The events, in order, of high school boys’ swimming and diving are; the 200 Medley Relay, 200 Yard Freestyle, 200 Yard IM, 50 Yard Freestyle, 1 Meter Diving, 100 Yard Butterfly, 100 Yard Freestyle, 500 Yard Freestyle, 200 Yard Freestyle Relay, 100 Yard Backstroke, 100 Yard Breaststroke, and the 400 Yard Freestyle Relay. These are the standard events at official meets.

The Arapaho Relays meet is more of a “fun” meet for the swimmers because there are many events that are made especially for the meet. Some of the events that are unique to this meet are the 200-yard Backstroke Relay, the 1000 yard Freestyle Relay, the 100-yard Freestyle Relay, and more. LP participates in this meet almost every year as almost a warm-up for the rest of the season. It helps swimmers get a feel for the pool and racing again as well as get an early indication of what needs to be worked on stroke-wise.

Coronado, the first dual meet LP swam in, resulted in a victory for LP. The next meet was against DCC which also saw a victory for LP. Both times the events were well rehearsed and everyone performed pretty well overall. At the most recent dual meet of Air Academy, however, it seemed sloppy. Diving didn’t get first and everyone swam slower than their best times by a lot, and several people disqualified by not doing the stroke right. Despite these drawbacks LP still won and maintained their streak of never losing to Air Academy.                                                                                                                                         

At the Arapaho Invite, LP took third of five teams. After being halfway through the season, each swimmer swam certain events consistently so the coach decided to switch things up and every swimmer swam something different than they were used to at the Arapaho Invite. This is a good meet to look at the new developments of swimmers over the course of the season and to see if there is anything to change training wise to better prepare them. It is also good to look back from before this meet to gauge the rate that swimmers have improved and what needs to be done for future meets.

Swimming is a very physically intense sport that requires the use of muscles all over the body. LP has been doing something right when it comes to training because of the undefeated dual meet record it holds. If LP continues what it is doing now then it can for sure see a good outcome at the PPAC and State meets. One of the problems for LP, however, is the fact that it has such a small amount of participants each year, and the divers are worse off because they only average about three divers each year on the team. If the sport were to have more renown then more people with great swimming potential could show up and be on the team.