Juan Diego’s Swim Team closes in on their State Meet in less than two weeks. Overall, 10 people from Juan Diego’s team qualified for state, and are working hard to get a place in the final meet at State. 

Juan Diego’s results for the 10 meets they had attended had come in second place for 6 out of the 10 meets. Juan Diego had very close scores with other teams, yet still came in second place. At the first meet of the season. Judge Memorial had won with 173 points, and Juan Diego came in second with 99.5 points. This had continued throughout the season, with scores of the winning team being 191, and JD’s 123, another being Judge having 200 points, and JD having 121 points. Abby Tenzer added — “I don’t think we will do better than last year. I think this because last year we had 13 seniors, and we have about 6 this year. Our team is also significantly smaller than previous years.” Juan Diego’s swim team is about half the size it was last year, which makes it difficult for the team to score more points at meets. This is the one of the downsides to a small team, as well as less motivation to try harder, and to make it to meets or practice. “Most people only show up for meets and don’t really practice much, I think this will affect us at state.” said a swimmer. Another swimmer stated — “Even though we have a small team, sportsmanship is a good tool to find motivation and improve yourself.” Abby Tenzer (Sophomore, Girls Captain) stated — “I think our swim community is decent. I think that the girls are very close and supportive to each other. I think we are all very close and friendly with each other. I think this will strengthen our ability to work at state because we will be supportive to each other, and encourage each other no matter what.” People on the swim team think that the sportsmanship is really good and important but so is a bigger team. They think that the size of the team will affect the results at state. 

The Juan Diego swim team is a supportive community with healthy encouragement and respectful sportsmanship towards one another and other teams. Swimmers often cheer each other on and push each other to embrace their potential– “Our team interacts with each other very well as a good majority. I can proudly say that our girls have amazing sportsmanship, and it is shown at swim meets. The girls support other girls on other teams by cheering them on, etc.” says Abby Tenzer (Sophomore, Girls Captain). Respect is an important component of the team and enables swimmers to maintain healthy relationships with one another— “I think the team has great sportsmanship and it has for all three years I’ve been a part of the team. Everyone gets along surprisingly well, and it is rare for a bunch of drama to occur within the team.”, observes Carmen Montoya (Junior). A safe and supportive environment can dramatically improve a competitive and progressive mindset; swimmers surprisingly feel more motivated to push themselves further during practice and at meets which will improve the Juan Diego team’s odds to win at State — “Our good community 100% percent will positively affect how our team will perform at state; all the hype we give each other will motivate us to push ourselves beyond our limits and this will help us win as many events as possible at state.” (Carmen). Hopefully, due to the healthy and respectful relationships between swimmers on the team, motivation to work hard will spread and help JD swim place high at State.

Overall, most of the swimmers and captains think that State this year will not perform better than previous years because of the smaller team, and lack of motivation it had in previous years. If the team had been bigger this year, there would have been more of a chance to win state. Carmen stated — “Not gonna lie, I don’t think we will perform better than last year because the team lost many talented swimmers who each specialized in different events. However, I know this team has great potential; our new members of the team are performing extremely well, especially for being underclassmen.” Despite the lack of chance that the swim team will win state, they gained many new swimmers this year and hope to gain more in the future to raise their chances of winning state. Camilla, a freshman girl and new to the team stated — “I think the swim community is awesome, we all are respectful and responsible and I think we will have good outcomes at state” Another Freshman stated — “ I think we’re all pretty good, everyone gets along pretty good too.”