This year’s 2020 East Girls Swim Team has started their season off with a bang. For the first time in 6 years, the Gold team won the intersquad meet beating the Blue team’s raining victory from past years, in a close 95-91 point meet- having the most amount of points is the goal of each team. 

The intersquad meet is a fun, first competition between the girls, themselves, on the swim team, to help prepare for the future meets with the harder competition. Swimmers Allison Alguire ‘23, Ellie Sheridan ‘22, and Sophie Williams ‘22, along with their other 50 teammates, swam at the meet, representing the Gold team during this victory. 

“I think our team will do really well. From the meet on Thursday, I could tell that the hard work from practices is paying off and we will succeed,” Sheridan said. “I am excited to see how the rest of the season will go and how everyone will improve their times.” 

The team’s past state championships and success in swim meets outshine other schools’ efforts and has continued to make the program at East extremely competitive. 

The swimmers’ hard work and effort were shown in the duel, swim meet on Tuesday set. 22, when the girls beat Hudsonville by 73 points.

Due to COVID-19,  swim practices started later than expected because of the virus and chemical problems with the pool’s water. 

“With less practice time it makes it harder to get in shape as fast. This will hopefully not affect our season too much, since every team is in the same boat for the most part and I’m hoping that some extra rest will work in our favor this year,” Williams said. 

Although Williams is not keen on the idea that practices had been delayed, she still believes that her team, “has a great chance for success this year. We will have to work extra hard, that’s for sure, but the team has a lot of motivation,” she said.

COVID-19 has not only affected the girl’s practice schedules and meets, but also their long-lasting team traditions.

 “Usually we are able to hang out in the team room and have the full team in the locker rooms, which is usually where we get ready for meets together and blast music, but this year we can’t enjoy fun pre-meet experiences,” Sheridan said. “Beach day was also canceled this year which is something we do before the season starts and look forward to after a long, first two weeks of hard practices.”

The reaching and building of goals is something that the Swim Team believes greatly in, especially in getting good times and making it to the State Championship meet. 

“My goals this swim season are to obviously get faster, but also to enjoy myself, have a good time, and hopefully win another state championship,” Alguire said. 

This year, being Division 2 and experiencing COVID-19, has affected Alguire’s aspirations by “limiting my training and making access to pools, to practice, very difficult,” Alguire said in response to the effects of COVID-19 on her goals.

The competition at last year’s State Championship meet was close, with East only winning by 11 points over Cranbrook. This year, the team has moved to Division 2 for competition, which means the times get faster, and the schools get bigger. 

“The competition in Division 2 will make this year’s State Meet very close that’s for sure. The cut times for Division 2 have become faster so we will need as many people to qualify as possible,” Williams said when asked about how she thinks the competition will compare to last year. 

Although the future of the Girls Swim team remains a mystery as they enter Division 2 swim meets, because of COVID-19, swimmers, like Alguire, remain optimistic that it’s nothing that this team can’t face and continue to work hard for this season.