Making a splash

By AJ Ballard |

The boys’ swim team placed first at their SAISD meet last month, and senior Kevin Malcolm also placed at an invitational meet last week.

The boys have a fairly large team with more than 20 members, and the girls have four members competing currently.

“Every year, no matter what, you do get better because of training and conditioning,” sophomore Charles Harding said.

The swimmers practice two hours every morning to keep in shape. As of late, they have been working on their breathing skills with their new coach. Lee Willing is the new swim coach and has been coaching for thirty years now, but this is his first year on this campus.

At SAISD, no individual swimmer took tops in their event, but the team’s effort propelled them to win first. The boys beat Fredericksburg, Fox Tech, Edison, Brackenridge, Cole, Lanier and Burbank scoring 97 more points than the second place team.

“This was significant because we did it as a team,” Willing said. “Every swimmer on the team contributed points.”

Then, Malcolm got to compete at the South Zone TISCA Championships last week, where he placed third out of four students.

As they move toward district, they will have another meet at SAISD natatorium next week and another the first day back of school from break. The team will face the other schools in our district at the end of January.

“Well, we’re in a really tough district so it’s hard to say but individually [they are] going to do well,” Willing said. “It’s going to be hard to score points, but we’ll see some positives individually.”