High School Swimming Swim

When I was appointed as a Varsity Co-Captain for the high school swim team in my freshman year, I was still new to the high school scoring system, which differed from the club meets that I grew up participating in. I devoted my time as a captain leading activities I was accustomed to- running warm-ups at meets, facilitating practice dives, and assisting in equipment setup.
During this period, I couldn’t help but notice that some swimmers, especially new members, were not getting as much attention in activities and workouts. In high school swim meets, I learned, points are earned based on the order that swimmers finish. Throughout the season, my coach and my Co-Captain Tan always prioritized the fastest swimmers, spending the most time with them, banking our team’s success on a handful of swimmers. I was watching this process with dismay, and when we started losing meets by a mere couple meets despite taking most first places for the events, I knew …show more content…
“Franklin!” I had to scream his name five times before he looked up, bewildered. I offered to help him, and we worked on fixing his breaststroke for the next 20 minutes, focusing the details that he hadn’t been taught before. Pull, breathe, kick, glide. Keep the head steady. Angle the feet for the optimal way to catch water.
In the following days, I noticed more people who had irregularities in their stroke technique. As the season continued, I kept my focus on helping my teammates realize the importance of details in swimming, working with individual people a couple of minutes every practice. At the end of the season, our varsity boys defeated Lynbrook High School- the long reigning league champions- at a meet. Looking at the score distribution, I couldn’t help but smile when I noticed that the majority of our team’s points were earned not from our top swimmers, but from everyone