Aiming for a run at states, the swim team dove into the new season in their first meet at the Christiansburg High School Invitational on Saturday December 3. A highlight for the team included a sixth-place finish overall for senior Alex Rush in the 50-meter freestyle.

In the team’s home opener on Friday December 13, both the boys and girls teams defeated William Fleming and Lord Botetourt. In the second home meet of the season against Turner Ashby High School on Friday January 6, the boys team won 114-91, however the girls team fell 140-66.

“Our goals are to have our kids have a wonderful season and to do their best swims,” said head coach Leslie Ayers.

The team features 23 new swimmers to the team. The large number of new swimmers to the program will be beneficial next season as well, as the team will lose 12 seniors.

“The size [of the team], and the new swimmers that are willing to put in all this hard work and time to swim well, that has been impressive,” said Ayers.

Junior Trey Williams, who competes in distance events, returns to the team after successful freshman and sophomore seasons. Williams qualified for regions both seasons and is aiming to make it even further in post-season competition.

“My individual goals are to make it to the state finals in the 500 free, as well as to get my 500 time under a 5:20,” said Williams.

Williams is hoping the team can decrease their times as a whole and increase the number of members in post-season competition.

“The team seems to need improvement  on getting faster and getting more people to qualify for the regional meet,” said Williams. “One improvement from last season is that we have much more people in all four grades which will make year to year transitioning much easier, as well as increase our chances of winning meets.”

Senior Kela Leonard, one of the new members on the team is working to improve individually to help the team as whole.

“I hope to get a lot faster because it is my first year of swimming competitively for the high school. I did [swimming] when I was maybe eight or nine, so I want to improve and get to the same level that a lot of people are on our team,” said Leonard.

For Leonard, joining the swim team was something she had wanted to do throughout her high school career.  Since it was Leonard’s last year at the high school, she decided to change sports from basketball to swimming

“I’ve always really just liked swimming in general, and my mom actually competitively swam all throughout her life and through college, and she’s been trying to get me to swim,” said Leonard. “I played basketball before, so it was in the same season, and so I never really did it. So I just had to give it a try this year.”