Amanda Ford is a 17-year-old senior who has been on the girls swim team for two years now. The swim team started their season on August 24, before school even started, by playing games to get to know each other, which is important for a good team spirit. The training takes place at Olympic High School every day for one and a half hours after school, and is lead by coach Mari Guagliardo, the girls call her“Coach G” and she has been coach for the past two years.

This year there are 27 girls on the team, and captains are Tori Allen and Maddison Polzin. In their practice the team works out strokes, drills and speeds and they end practice doing starts. The team is working on different techniques of swim; freestyle, backstroke, butterfly or breaststroke.

ABOVE: Ford dove during starts practice.

“What I like about being on the swim team is that swimming is a good workout, and I really like the team aspect. The team is super fun and our coach is super nice, too,” Ford said. “The only thing I don’t like about swim practice every day is that it is very exhausting and you smell like chlorine the whole time.”

Her goal for this season is to improve her personal record, while her expectations for the whole team is to push each other to have individuals go to state championship. “Last year a few girls went to state and our goal for this season is to come to state, too.’’ The most important thing about swim for her is to be good teammates with each other and to have fun pushing each other to better scores. The team has meets almost every week where they compete against other teams to get better times to improve their chance of qualifying for state.

ABOVE: Ford warmed up during  practice.