After opening the season on September 24 at Vestavia, Homewood High’s swim team is diving head-first into a new season.
Homewood’s swim team functions a little differently than many schools in the area. Because there is not a pool to host school-sanctioned practices, the athletes practice on their own through club teams or at local pools like the YMCA.
Senior Lilly Maske has been competing for the swim team every year of high school and swimming outside of school for 9 years. Despite not having school-sanctioned practices, she works hard on top of her other sports to get in the training she needs.
“I practice by myself, so I make my own workouts,” said Maske. “I have to critique myself. I usually set up videos to watch and correct my form to see what I am doing right and wrong.”
Head varsity swim and baseball coach Lee Hall is still very involved with the team despite not directly running the swimmer’s practices.
“I make the schedule, enter our swimmers in the meets, and attend all of their meets to be there to support and encourage them,” he said.
The season lasts through the fall with meets typically twice a month and ending with the state championship meet on Nov. 22-23. At meets, individual swimmers are allowed to enter 2-3 events, and the positions the swimmers finish in are all added together at the end of the meet to determine team standings.
Qualifying for state in swim is no easy feat and extremely competitive. Swimmers can attempt to qualify for no more than 4 events come the state meet in Huntsville at the end of the season.
“You have to meet certain times in each event,” Maske said. “But once you meet those times, you automatically qualify for state.”
Despite Homewood’s swim team only consisting of 7 athletes, 2 of them from Homewood Middle School, it does not stop them from competing strongly. They are all dedicated to representing Homewood’s name to the best of their ability at meets.
Hall recognizes the difficulty the team as a whole faces due to the low number of athletes but is nonetheless proud of them for what they have accomplished.
“You do win meets in numbers, so our ability to earn a lot of points is hurt,” Hall said. “But, we have very strong individual swimmers. They are as committed as any other athletes in our school and very self-motivated. They inspire me constantly by their work ethic.”
As the team continues to progress through the season, both Maske and Hall said their main goals were to keep up team stamina as much as possible so that each swimmer can reach their own potential.
“This is a very tough sport and it takes lots of years and dedication to become an elite swimmer,” Hall said. “I just want them all to enjoy the journey and see where they can get through their hard work.”
