In the Great Bend meet on Dec. 6, the boys swimming team accomplished the task of getting third place out of eight teams.

Senior Kaden McBride and sophomore LeRoy Goodspeed took part in this event.

“A lot of us placed in different events,” McBride said. “Even the people that didn’t place still got us a lot of points.”

Goodspeed helped the B team take sixth, along with sophomore Evan Powell and freshmen Noah Shaeffer and Jude Hileman.

“I improved a lot in time, but I ended up messing up on one of my flip turns,” Goodspeed said.

Since practice began in November, the team has been improving every day, according to head coach Jane Rorstrom.

“So many have improved their freestyle, flip turns, backstrokes and breaststrokes,” Rorstrom said. “We work on all the strokes. We also work on the starts, the turns and the entries.”

The first practice was something most were not prepared for yet.

“The thing with the first practice is we had a lot of new freshmen and some new sophomores that kind of just didn’t understand what was going on the whole time,” sophomore Bryton Unsworth said.

With Goodspeed being one of the new sophomores, it was something he had to get used to.

“It a was pretty confusing,” Goodspeed said. “You definitely feel very tired after your first practice. After the first practice, everyone got it down, and it was pretty good.”

With there being different types of strokes, including the backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly and freestyle, everyone has strengths and flaws with each of them.

“I usually do fly for the team,” McBride said. “Within five days, I brought my time down by three seconds.”

Finding what you need to improve on may be easy for some, but hard for others.

“I’d say some of the only things that I’m having trouble with are the fly and the breast,” Goodspeed said. “Those two events are very difficult for me. Once I get those down, I think I will be able to improve quickly.”

With the season ending in February, there is a lot of time for improvement.

“I think the rest of the season will go really well,” McBride said. “We have been doing pretty good in all of our swim meets. A lot of people have been placing in their events, so I think it is going to be great.”

25wclark@usd489.com & 25kschwien@usd489.com