The TPA Varsity Swim Team understands the concept of teamwork. Although a heavily individualized sport, our 2015 swimmers truly pulled together as a team to showcase an astonishingly impressive season.
In the final State Meet, the team made unbelievable achievements. Junior David Hudson finished third place in the 100 yard Butterfly and sixth place in the 200 yard Individual Medley. Junior Jeffery Snoddy finished seventh place in the 100 yard Breaststroke and seventh place in the 50 yard Freestyle. Senior Co-Captain Bronson Stephens finished 25th in the 100 yard Fly. TPA also had two relay teams with swimmers Bronson Stephens, Jeffery Snoddy, David Hudson, Junior Aron Mcbay, and Freshman Joshua Cisneros-Kinney, that were very successful. This relay team finished fifth in the 200 Medley relay and seventh in the 200 Free relay. All these amazing accomplishments of, as Coach Stephens says, “ our group of small but mighty boys” led TPA to win eighth place overall out of more than 100 Division 2 schools.
The team’s astounding season did not happen by chance. It happened because of dedicated hard work and sincere camaraderie. Co-Captain Katherine Riffle describes a normal day of practice saying, “ we do kick sets and pull sets that have a similar difficulty level to warm-up routines for track runners… It’s just a killer on the leg and arm muscles… [We also swim] long distance to build stamina, which is similar in difficulty to the long distance runs for track, except, when you’re in the water, you must also intensely control your breathing.” Katherine also describes the emphasis for teamwork on the swim team. She says, “ our swimmers watch each other’s form and help each other improve. It is also important to swim with each other and stay on the same interval to help with pacing and stamina.”
Bronson quantifies the rewards from these practices by saying, “ I feel that, from all the work I’ve put in, I’ve gotten a lot faster. I dropped a whole second in the 50 Free in just three months.” This is a huge achievement in swimming. Moreover, from this accomplishment and others, Bronson says that, in order to succeed, “ I learned how much work you really need to put in, how much pain you really need to take, and how much you really need to want to win.”
What speaks the most for this year’s swim team, however, is that during the State Meet, theentire team — both girls and boys — were there cheering on the team’s top five swimmers. The team had begun the season together and they would finish the season together.