Sherwood swimmers attend a Friday afternoon practice on December 7 to prepare for a meet the next day. Both the boys’ and the girls’ team swam and lost against BCC on December 8.

Swim Coach Brendan Lees called out the times of the final swim of the pre-season practice on Tuesday, December 4, and sent his swimmers to the locker-rooms huffing for air. After swimming some 5,000 yards, equivalent to 200 lengths of the pool, everyone still had a whole day of school left after the early morning practice that began at 5.

Welcome to the world of swimming. This is not the most glamorous or eye-popping of sports, but certainly one of the most difficult, demanding and tiring. The long and sometimes tedious practices do lead to excitement at meets when swimmers step up to blocks to glide through the water as fast as they can. The sport is a prime example of where you do only as well as you’ve prepared.

“This year’s going to be an exciting one for our girls’ team. We have a solid team with a lot of depth and their times will be a reflection of all their hard work and dedication,” said Lees. Last year, the Lady Warriors placed 1st in their division, 1st at regionals and 3rd in the county overall.

With strong relays and a lot of potential to rack up points in individual events, the girls’ team expects to finish at least in the top three at the Washington Metro Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championship (Metros), considered the most important meet of the season. The team also has a solid chance at winning its division and placing 1st at regionals again.

Leading the way to match, or even surpass, last year’s successes are the three seniors this year that have committed to Division 1 schools. Kylie Sheapp pledged to Towson, while Anna Kolanowski is going to the University of Georgia and Megan Conrad to Villanova University.

“I used to work so hard to make myself better and get into college but now it’s great to just have to focus on lowering my times as much as I can before I graduate,” said Conrad, who is a backstroke specialist and has a solid chance at winning this year’s 100 yard backstroke event at Metros.

The team also expects to break the 400-freestyle relay record set back in 2008 with three of the four swimmers on that relay consisting of Kolanowski, Sheapp and Conrad. However, since a relay requires four swimmers and each swimmer can only swim three events per meet, the college recruits still have to turn to other teammates to rack up more points. With each new season, teams tend to struggle early on as key swimmers have left due to graduation. Sherwood has lost some seniors from last year, but at the same time has an incoming class of freshman talent this season. “We lose some people, but it’s fine because it goes both ways. We have some good freshmen so it’s balanced, to say the least,” said Kolanowski, who is a strong contender to be crowned the 200-yard freestyle champion at Metros.

With freshman talent and strong seniors to rally around, the girls’ team is hungry to build on last year’s successes. “I’m excited this year; it should be a fun one with lots of ups and not so many downs hopefully. We will see how things go,” said Sheapp, one of the team’s captains.

*Lee is currently involved in Journalism