By Hannah Frazier
TPA swim is diving deep and putting in the effort! A new Fall sports season at Tempe Prep means a new swim team! To optimize their in-depth training, the team has made a few changes which have already paid off.
Tempe Prep swim is bigger than ever. This year, Head Coach Jenn Stephens welcomes 31 swimmers for the largest swim team that the school has ever had! Coach Jenn has a lot of help this season due to the size of the team. Assistant Coaches Michael Hill, Maria Zello, and Rebekah Smaw are all experienced swimmers who hope to pass their skills down to younger athletes. This year’s seniors/captains are Josh Hudson, Anna Moriarty, Jordan Ehmann, and Ehsa Murray. These leaders act as role models for the team and help make sure that everything runs smoothly.
The size of the team is not the only change that the swim team has made this season. Middle school swim is no longer part of the Fall season but is being moved to the Spring season. This is because there are less full-time coaches and an even bigger team would be too much to manage all at once. Also, this way, Coach Jenn can focus exclusively on preparing for high school competitions. When asked what the advantages to focusing on high school for a season are, Coach Jenn says, “Most of the kids come ready to swim hard because they have already developed skills coming either out of middle school or being in high school swim previous years.” She is looking forward to coaching new swimmers as well and is making an effort to help them learn while more experienced swimmers develop their skills as well.
Similarly, Josh Hudson, one of the four co-captains, says that he is excited about the team’s balance between experienced athletes and new swimmers. The team captains are all very proud to be swimmers and hope that TPA Swim is a welcoming environment for both experienced and novice swimmers alike. Anna Moriarty hopes that the whole team can gain a new appreciation for swim and says, “I would say my goal for the whole team is to have the newer swimmers learn all the strokes and learn how fun swim is.”
With there being so many experienced swimmers, new members of the swim team can learn quicker and get tips not only from their coaches but also from practiced swimmers. Having only high school this season also opens up the opportunity to be better at a state level because of the team’s depth in their training.
Ehsa Murray says, “I’m hoping to get as many of us to state as we can and I’m also hoping that we are all able to learn and grow as a team.” All four captains share this common goal of getting as many swimmers as they can to state. Jordan Ehmann says that since the team is so big this year, TPA is basically guaranteed some people to qualify for state. This swim season, the team has 10 meets total. Six of these meets are practice meets and four are qualifying meets for the state championship.
The team as a whole seemed very excited about their Sedona meet. The TPA swimmers went to Sedona on Sept. 5. The meet was their first of the season and Coach Jenn saw the trip as an opportunity to bring the team closer together. The team took a road trip with a team dinner at Chipotle and a stop for dessert at Rock Springs Cafe. Not only was this a great bonding experience for the swimmers that should keep them connected for the rest of the season, but Tempe Prep won the entire meet! Tempe Prep had 8 relays get state meet consideration times. Specifically, TPA killed it in the girls 200 medley relay for both the A and B teams, the boys 200 medley relay for the A team, the girls 200 free relays for the A and B teams, the girls A team in the 400 free relay, and the boys A team 400 free relay. There were also 3 individual state consideration times set by Josh Hudson for the 50 free, Mandy Maurer for the 500 free, and Lily Cozens for the 100 breast. In addition to these competitive victories, of the 29 swimmers that attended the meet, 20 set personal records in an event.
If you ever see a TPA swimmer on campus be sure to congratulate them on their amazing meet! Their win shows that diving deep into practice and training pays off. This sets an awesome standard for TPA swim and we can only hope that they continue to do this well for the rest of the season!
