Last year’s Seahawk swim team featured many talented seniors. In fact, they made up more than one third of the team. Their season was full of success. They won races and broke records. When they graduated, they left a big void. This year’s upperclassmen, Kylie, Wren, Jaxson, Peter, and Paxton, are looking to lead a younger team toward the success they had last year. Partly filling the void will be four incoming fresh

men: Mia Nappi, Ben and Nick Ambrosiani, and Sam Mclain.

Normally, the swim season starts before the school year, along with all the other fall sports. This year was different. It was already two weeks into the school year when they were finally let into the pool. Since then, they have been training hard and swimming fast.

The swimmers journeyed to Kenai on Friday, the 16th of September, for their first meet of the season. The Seahawks faced off against Kenai and Soldonta, and won a lot of races. In a meet, each swimmer can compete in two individual races and two relays. Mia won both of her individual events: the 100 fly and 100 breast. Lydia placed first in the 200 IM, an event where swimmers perform each of the 4 competitive strokes: freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly.

Seward’s relay teams had several first place finishes, including the boys 200 free relay, featuring Ben, Paxton, Sam, and Peter, and the girls 200 free and medley of Lydia, Kylie, Wren, and Mia. On top of all that, almost every swimmer got a personal record in at least one of their events. 

Despite their great performances, the Seahawks aren’t satisfied. They have set lofty goals for the rest of their season. Sam wants to “Win state in the pool.” It is especially tough to win state in swimming. Most sports are split into divisions so the small schools don’t compete against the big Anchorage schools. In swimming this is not the case. There is only one classification for the entire state, and swimmers qualify with individual times. Nick’s goal for the season is to swim a 100 free in 57 seconds. He can hold his breath for 56 seconds so this goal should be attainable. Ben is hoping to “go sub 25 seconds in the 50 free.” These goals won’t be easy because, as Mia said, the swimmers “lost a year of training.”

Their next meet will be a duel with Homer on Friday, October 2nd. There is some speculation about how many races the swimmers will compete in this year due to Covid-19. Cross country, football and volleyball have already had events cancelled and moved at the last minute.

Gallery • 7 Photos

Peter Spanos