It is the week of Nov. 16, and there are 68 girls grades 7th to 12th grade preparing or helping prepare their nine teammates for the Minnesota State High School League meet at the University Of Minnesota. Their coach Brian Luke, along with his assistant coaches, Torie Burbel, Carrie Madeline and Stuart Rival are prepping these girls both physically and mentally at their two and a half hour practices from 3 to 5:30 p.m. every weekday. These girls have been working towards this meet all season. Big swim meets, like these are extremely physically demanding, so these girls have to walk into them with their best mindset, and highest goals in mind.
The swim team has been very successful the 2024-2025 swim season, as they have been champions of 5+ swim conferences, and runners up for 3+ invite meets, as well as numerous individual student champions in different categories.
“They were conference relay champions, involved invite champions, suburban East Conference Champions, Suburban East Conference JV meet champions, at true team state meet, they were section four double A true team champions, And at the true team state meet, they were second runner up,” Luke said.
Swim team is not as easy as it looks. There is so much training that goes into it, and so much mental work with themselves, and their team mates, pushing themselves to be better. Swim is physically demanding, and all the girls are mentally disciplined to put their best food forward Luke explained.
Sophomore and varsity swimmer Lucy Paczosa explained, they do goal sets on Tuesdays, and worlds greatest on Wednesdays, and then sometimes JV will go do dry land work and varsity will stay in the pool, happening about twice a week.
The swim team has to be not only in their greatest mindset, but the combined mindsets with their fellow team mates, to make sure they are all aligned, and working together to push themselves, which will later help them improve on their swimming.
“I feel like we have a lot of like depth, like we have a lot of people who swim really good, more than like we have like one, like a lot of teams have like one or two, three people that, like, swim really good,” Paczosa said.
The captains of the swim team, seniors Margaret Reed, Maysen Puhrmann, Gabbi Chau, Annika Beck and Jayla Petersen have a large role on the swim team. Although they are not completely recognized as captains, rather than fellow teammates.
“You’re always, like an upperclassman, you are trying to put your best foot forward. So I think that by the looks of it on the team, you couldn’t really tell who was captain and who was not. But I think you definitely have to be very much more aware of like the schedule. Our coach, he kind of writes it on the board once, and expects us to kind of communicate that,” Reed said.
Nine students will attend the MSHSL meet and competing, based off of their results from their qualifier meet. From Thursday to Saturday these students were at the top of their section. Only two middle schoolers have qualified for state this year, seventh grader Maddie Mathiason, and eighth grader Claire Christianson. There are also seven high schoolers, four of whom are seniors. Freshman Neva Sanders, sophomores Audrey Serres and Lucy Paczosa, and seniors, Alex Kruse, Rhio Fay, Jayla Petersen and Margaret Reed. These girls have been working towards this meet all season and are excited to find their outcome.
