All 19 of the swimmers in the Husky program got a chance to taste what success is all about at the Sweet Home Relays, a non-scoring meet held last Friday.
Of the 15 relay events in both the girls and the boys divisions, Sweet Home won 12. Every swimmer was on at least one winning team and 14 had personal bests.
“Starting out the season, it’s hard to have a personal best because we’re tired,” said coach Doug Peargin, who was very pleased with the performance of his relatively inexperienced team.
“I guarantee that we’re as tired as any team in the state. There’s nobody that works daily doubles all year long like we do.”
For some swimmers, that isn’t enough. They work after the afternoon practice with the swim club team just to go the extra mile. Friday, the hard work paid off.
“There was one kid that hadn’t had much or any experience in every race,” said Peargin, who was pleased with the leadership of his seniors, Anne Helfrich and Sean Martin. “I put some of the kids that had been around before in some events that weren’t their best events because I wanted them to have to work.”
For the girls, Dani Birky, Katie Jones, and Katie Stratman were all part of four winning teams. Sean Martin and Jeff Stratman performed the same feat for the boys.
This wasn’t just a patsy meet either with tough programs from Marist and Junction competing as well as Stayton’s touted girls team. Part of the edge was that Sweet Home was the only school to not have one team disqualified for illegal strokes or some other infraction. Peargin credits his coaches, stroke coach Rene Kirkland and wall coach Bruce West.
“Without three people working in practice, you have a lot more trouble,” said Peargin.
He thinks the Sweet Home swimmers now understand why they work hard on conditioning and technique when they see their success and lack of disqualifications.
Now Peargin will have the team prepare for a similar relay event at Philomath this Thursday.
He will juggle his swimmers around some in different events to get an idea where they will be most successful when the scoring meets begin because sometimes swimmers improve in a stroke they weren’t successful in last year, according to Peargin. Every swimmer will perform in at least one event that they didn’t do at the Sweet Home relays while others may stay in some events to improve confidence.
“It’s just a learning process to see where your strongest people in each event are,” said Peargin, “so in scoring events, I can put our power where it needs to be.”
So the learning process continues as they chase the black line and Peargin charts the course for the team.