Girls Swim Team tunes up before state meet

Avery Green, Staff Writer

The Girls Swim team competed this past weekend against Fenton and Northview at a swim meet that would be their second-to-last chance at earning a rigorous state cut time. The state cut times have recently become much more difficult to obtain since the girls have moved out of Division 3 to Division 2. Most swimmers “suited up” in their notorious knee skins to attempt to reach their state time cuts in order to compete at the OK White State Championship on November 21. 

A knee skin is a swimsuit that is supposed to compress your muscles and lets no water inside to potentially prevent drag in the water. Are these fish liked swimsuits physically advantageous or is it more of a mind game?

“The knee skins are both mentally and physically beneficial,” Norah Murphy ‘22 said. “Part of it personally, they make you feel faster, so then it makes you work harder.” Murphy secured a 100 freestyle state cut time and now will advance to the state championship along with many other of our fellow Lady Pioneers. 

As time starts winding down until the OK White Conference Championship, the swimmers will start to elevate their level of focus and training throughout their practices. This higher level of intensity is needed since the swimmers have just moved up to Division 2 and the competition will be more demanding this year. Some of these girls have been swimming alongside each other in the pool and hanging out outside of it since age eight and this familiarity fuels their competitive attitudes in practice and in meets. 

“Practices are insanely competitive when you’ve been swimming next to some of the same girls since elementary school so it gets intense,” Allison Aligure ‘23 said. ‘We all know that we have to work hard because winning states will be more difficult now that we’re in Division 2.”

The swimmers who have reached their state cut times will head off to Northview on November 21 to compete at an extremely high level for the OK White State Championship title. “It’s going to take every single person swimming there best, no wiggle room for bad swims,” Aligure says.