The pool churns like a foamy tornado behind legs ferociously but deliberately kicking the icy blue water. A hand slices through the surface until the palm slaps flat against the wall, and a face bursts into the air. At once the swimmer rips the goggles from her face to see the number for which she has labored so hard: her time, the driving force behind these aquatic athletes.

“It’s not always about winning; it’s about getting better,” senior Katy Thellman said. Thellman is one of three captains of the girls’ swim team.

“Getting better” implies cutting down one’s time, so the swimmer is essentially competing against both opponents and herself.

“Swimming’s not an easy sport,” said Annette McDonald, who coaches both the girls’ and the boys’ swim teams. “A lot of people think it is, but you’ve really got to put in your time and work on good technique.”

The weekly schedule can attest to her words. The girls practice at the Indoor Aquatic Center every day except Sunday, including afternoon practices running Monday through Friday. Additional practices are held from 5:30 to 6:30 a.m.on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, but McDonald said “not everybody goes to [those].”

“I had about eight people come for about an hour,” she said of that day’s morning session. “Eight out of 28, so 20 got to sleep in. Not bad.”

“It does take up a lot of time—it’s like two hours after school every day—but you learn to adjust,” Thellman said. “You have to motivate yourself to do both to be able to get in swimming and homework.”

With state swimming competitions quickly approaching, practices are becoming increasingly challenging, sophomore Morgan Miller observes.

“Two days ago was the hardest of the season by far,” she said.

The effects of rigorous training are obvious when it comes to meets, according to McDonald.

“It’s really easy to see improvement,” she said. “What you have is a time, and I can say without a doubt everyone has improved their time from the beginning of the season to where we are right now. The goal is to improve even more.”

Miller knows exactly where she wants to boost her speed.

“Right now I have a state cut in a relay,” Miller said. “But I’m hoping to get an individual one in a freestyle stroke. We have two more meets, and JV League is the big one, where we’ll hope to get a lot of points and lose a lot of time.”

But there is more to being a swimmer than getting a chance to swim laps in the limelight. Miller also values the friends she has made on the team since her freshman year.

“It was a good connection to the high school when I was from junior high.”

Thellman, who has been swimming on the team since her sophomore year, appreciates the group’s companionship as well.

“I really just like being on a team because we always have good people, good friends, and I always make new friends. I meet a whole lot of people that I wouldn’t get to know otherwise.”

The coach agrees.

“It’s a really great group,” McDonald said. “They really want to be like a team, so we all wear our team uniforms; we all wear our team shirts. They stay and they cheer each other on. They’re sitting there watching the divers, clapping after every time they dive. They’re at the end of the pool, cheering somebody on to make them go faster, and they’re always giving high-fives.”

McDonald hopes that coming meets will warrant many more high-fives. State swimming prelims and finals are scheduled on May 20 and 21, respectively. Until then, the girls will be training tirelessly to taper their times.