Airport High School swimmers' love for sport doesn’t die despite loss to White Knoll, BC

Despite staying hopeful, the Airport High School swim team lost their swim meet against White Knoll and Brookland Cayce High School at The Country Club of Lexington on Tuesday, September 21, 2021.

The Airport high school swim team consists of six people, two girls and four boys. Even with such a small team, which leads to them not winning most meets, they all cherish the sport so much.

Although Airport High School lost their swim meet after trying their best Tuesday night, the year hasn’t been without effort. They practice every morning from 5:30am to 7:00am every morning before school. Their dedication is shown by how well they perform during their events during the meets, it just was not enough to beat some bigger teams.

Even when being defeated as a team, there are still other reasons to compete. For instance, each swimmer tries their hardest to beat their own times and continue to better themselves individually as swimmers. With such a small team it is harder to rack up points, even when every player on the team wins their events, but the meets are still important because the results from the meet are official. As one can see, despite losing their meet, Savannah S. and Ellie A. kept a positive attitude.

Both Savannah S. and Ellie A. thought they had a good chance of winning this swim meet against White Knoll and Brookland Cayce High School, but their team just fell short a few points due to the amount of swimmers on their swim team. Positive attitudes help a lot when competing, and they will continue to better themselves as swimmers, to then help the team gain a win.

Savannah S. shows her love for the Airport High School swim team by posting pictures on Instagram of her friends and herself at swim meets having a great time.

In an interview with Ellie she stated, “Swim is my favorite thing to do. It’s very challenging personally cause [sic] you’re always trying to beat your time and everything.”

Ellie A. also says, “I think we’re going to do pretty good. This team looks…pretty good, but I mean a lot of the girls look a lot younger than me, so I think I'll do alright.” This response was after being asked, “How do you think you're going to compete tonight in the swim meet?” To summarize, age has to do a lot with experience in swimming, so the more people on a swim team who have swum longer helps a team to earn points in meets.

Savannah S. stated, “When I first started looking at their team I thought we had a good chance, [as] our teams are about even; we don’t have the biggest teams.”

After being asked, “Do you have a favorite pool to swim at?” Ellie responds with, “I would say the Edenwood pool. Just cause [sic] it's like my home pool and that's where I started swimming.” Following Ellies response, Savannah also said, “Probably the Edenwood pool. For some reason it just feels better when I’m swimming there, all these other pools just feel different.”

Certain people are better and favor certain strokes more than other strokes. Ellie said, “My least favorite is definitely backstroke cause [sic] I cannot see where I'm going and I just go all over the place. And my favorite is breaststroke because it just came so natural to me.”

Savannah also said, “My least favorite is backstroke cause [sic] you can’t see where you’re going and I’m not really good at it. I don’t have the rhythm of that and the one I'm best at is butterfly.” Both girls are not fond of backstroke, but love the stroke that they are better at.

High school swimming is just like any other sport during high school. It costs $75 for the athletic fee, you have to sign a concussion waiver, and get a physical done at a doctors office. A normal swim practice consists of, according to Savannah, “You get in the pool at 5:30am… then you always do a warm up, which is usually like a 200 free, some kicks, and some stroke practice. Then you work on different things each day, depending on what other people need to work on, or yourself. We’ll work on different strokes, underwaters, your dives; just anything you notice that’s not the best or you need to work on. Then we end at 7:00am if we don’t have to break down the pool.” It is early, but allows you to get a great workout at the Quail Hollow swimming pool.

If you are interested in joining the AHS swim team, contact one of the players or email the varsity coach at cmowles@lex2.org.