Senior Jack Koller begins his day to the sound of his alarm clock at 5 a.m. He grabs a small breakfast like a bagel and shoves a swimsuit and towel in his backpack. He runs to the car and picks up a teammate who is five minutes away. Koller drives in the dark to the only pool in Columbia Public Schools (CPS): the Hickman pool.
The Hickman pool opened in 1969 and is now more than 50 years old. The pool has chipped paint and faded pink lane lines that used to be a bright red in years past. Koller said the pool isn’t great, but it’s the only pool available. He said because of a malfunction with the pool heater, the pool temperature was 91 degrees one day.
“It has a cockroach problem, and the heater and the AC don’t work, so it’s not very fun to swim at,” Koller said. “But, it has enough lanes to do short course yards, so we make it work.”
He arrives at the Hickman Pool at 5:50 a.m. so he can get ready for practice at six. Koller quickly dives into the water and begins a warmup that involves 400 yards of freestyle, 300 IM (a compilation of all of the strokes) and 200 yards kick. After the warmup, the swim team transitions into drills. Sophomore Jackson Veltrop said the types of drills the swimmers do in practice depend on the events the swimmers specialize in and what the coach wants to work on that day.
Sometimes, butterfly swimmers work on pulls, and sometimes they work on kicks. An example of a drill they do is four kicks per pull, which gives swimmers the strength to get the timing right in the butterfly and extend their stroke.
“On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, we lift in the weight room,” Veltrop said. “On every other day, we swim a lot of sets. Sets are basically a group of distances that you swim repeatedly in a certain time frame, which can get pretty tiring.”
Some members of the team say the early times make it hard to balance sports and school, but the veterans of the team are used to waking up early for practice. Junior Eric Fritschi says the most challenging thing to do in swimming is to get up early for practices. But, Fritschi believes his passion for swimming outweighs this minor inconvenience.
Veltrop, on the other hand, says it’s hard occasionally to get his homework done at night and then have to wake up at five the next day. He said the early start date taught him to manage his time.
When Veltrop and the team arrive at six to practice, they are not alone. All three high school teams share the Hickman pool, and they do all of their drills together. Senior Oakley Lorson said there was a lot of camaraderie between the different schools that isn’t there with other sports.
“I’m friends with people on the Hickman team, and I know them really well,” Oakley said. “I think it’s the fact that we are all practicing together and in the same place that sets the relationship between the different school teams apart from other sports.”
While the pool brings the teams together, their bonds are strengthened with their love of swimming. Fritschi said he didn’t really like any land-based sports when he played them but always felt at home in the water.
“I first like that swimming is before school, which is an opportunity that you don’t get in a lot of other sports,” Fritschi said. “I’ve never really liked land-based sports, but in the water, I feel like I belong more, and it’s a good workout for me.”
Koller said swimming also had many benefits compared to land-based sports, such as football or volleyball. He said it has a low impact and is a full-body workout.
“I like swimming because it’s harder in swimming to get injured in the water compared to something like running, where it’s easy to get injured,” Koller said.
Besides practices in the water, a large part of being on the team is on land. The team does team building activities outside of practices, such as paintball and pasta parties. Koller said the atmosphere of the team is very supportive and inclusive.
“We like to mess around and cheer for everyone at meets,” Koller said. “In practice, we’re pretty relaxed as long as we put the effort when we need to, but at meets, it’s more serious because we have to pay attention to our races and perform. But overall, it’s like one big family.”
What creates camaraderie among members of a team? Let us know in the comments below.
