The concept of swimming as a sport is traditionally looked down upon and usually forgotten about with all the other winter sports teams like wrestling, track and especially basketball stealing all the fame. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy going out to see the basketball team compete, and see the wrestlers go and win tournaments, but in terms of support, the swim team gets no student support when we are competing at meets. Students, and teachers for that matter, should show some more respect for swimming as a competitive sport.

Swimming is the best sport someone could be a part of for so many reasons. First off, I will openly say that the team chemistry and team bonding on the swim team is the best out of any other HHS sports teams that I have seen. Everyone on the team is always having a good time and laughing because everyone knows everybody.

Having the ability to swim as a sport or activity is also universal throughout your life. What I mean by that is it is something that you can do throughout your whole life, and it will never grow old or painful. Just saying, you normally don’t see people over the age of 40 still out playing competitive football and basketball.

Another thing, if you are working for a good dynamic workout routine, swimming would be a great thing to add. It is a proven fact that (of any sports) you work the most muscles in your body while swimming. And you know what I mean, if you’ve ever gotten out of the pool feeling sore everything after a hard core swim.

Swimming just needs some more recognition as a high school team. Normally when someone, in any sport, makes it to states in that competition, it’s a very large deal and all the students and teachers normally are asking about it and congratulating you. On the swim team, one of the relay teams qualified for the state meet, but it was actually somewhat of a surprise to me that almost no one, except for the people close to the team cared about that.

Also, in terms of acknowledgment, the HHS swim team could use just a small portion of money to help us out in basic and cheap items. Our swimming supplies (kickboards and pull buoys) have not been replenished in a very long time and most of them are falling apart and worn down and are very hard to use effectively. Also, we don’t have enough funding to even pay for everyone to receive their own suits for the season.

For being a fairly large competitive sports team at HHS swimming just needs to receive a little more recognition and a little more respect for what they do as a team.