Recently, members of the swim team showcased their skills at the UIL State-level Competition. This includes swimmers Aditya Singh (alternate), Ethan Wang, Evan Fang, Eliott Kim, Lucas Antonelli, and Samuel Brunson (alternate). Swimming is a sport that’s as much a mental activity as a physical one, and this is evident throughout the swim team’s season, and in the amount of hard work, they put into this. 

“The team practices for about 2 hours per day. We swim for an hour and a half every day and have some weight room, cardio, and stretching workouts in before we swim,” says Swim Coach, Coach Graves. 

In addition to swimming at LT, swimmers often set aside time to swim outside of school. 

 “I practice about 3 and a half hours a day because I have both club and high school practice,” Evan Fang said. 

The effort each individual puts into swimming is quite substantial, and according to many of the State Swimmers, swimming requires immense dedication and often takes up a large amount of their time. 

“I’ve been swimming for 12 years [to get to where I am today],” Lucas Antonelli said. 

Swimmers have been training for years to get to this moment, and have put in countless hours of practice to achieve their goals. 

“Making it to state is an excellent reward for all the hard work of an extremely long season. Being in season from September to February requires a lot of sacrifices during the year and during our school breaks. We practice over fall and winter break. We set our goals at the beginning of the season, and due to the length of the season, it can be hard to keep up the grueling hard work throughout the long season. It is always fascinating to see the team’s hard work result in making it to the state,” Coach Graves said. 

Though the team practices on their own, it’s still a sport they all do together, in their own distinctive ways. 

“Swim & Dive is a unique sport as it is both a team and an individual sport. At a swim meet there are individual events and team events.  Individuals and team events earn points depending on how you place them in the meet. Those points are totaled towards the whole team and the team with the most points wins the meet. Diving is an individual event that can earn the team points, just like the other individual events,” Coach Graves said.  

Students participated in various events, further displaying their strengths. 

“For state, I swam the 100 butterfly and the 50 freestyle plus the relay, so three events in total.” Evan Fang said. 

Whatever event the swimmers participated in, a common factor was their motivation. Motivation is a huge contender to the success of the swim team.

“Mentality in swim is pretty important because it subconsciously affects your performance. It’s important to have a shoot-for-the-stars mindset so your body tries its hardest and gives its all.,” Sophomore Aditya Singh said.