Liberty girls swim and dive team kicked off 2024 with a five meet win streak after a comparatively disappointing 2023 season.
Swimmers have cited that some of the upgrades made in the 2024 season have been initiated by the new senior captains: Elena Phan, Kate Clay, Eleanor Briggs, and Arshia Kathpalia.
“I think that the captains are pretty spirited kids, and I think they’re doing a good job keeping the excitement and the hype up during the swim meets,” coach Kris Daughters said.
This season the captains have been prioritizing team bonding and getting to better know the swimmers in and out of the pool, over the typical non-social practice.
“More people are coming to practice, and we’ve been trying to work on making meets fun,” senior captain Eleanor Briggs said. “We’re doing a lot of face paint and temporary tattoos, and we all have matching swimsuits.”
Liberty dive has also made a huge impact on the team’s success this year. Last year senior Maggie Fisher finished the year off by qualifying for the dive state championship. This year Fisher is hoping to qualify again, along with sophomore Kyleigh Smith.
“The team is good and strong this year. We have 3 seniors and two first years, which makes for a wide range of divers.” 2nd year diver Kyleigh Smith said.
Both Fisher and Smith have already qualified for kingco and districts. Along with Maggie Fisher who has also qualified for kingco.
“We have really good divers, and if you’re going against a team that’s really similar to your team, and they don’t have those diving points we can get up to a 13 point advantage,” Daughters said.
This increase in points gives the team an advantage going into their first events of the meet, providing a solid starting point for the swimmers to build off of. Along with an increase in team spirit and points, there has also been a change in the Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) rules. WIAA rules require each school to compete with others that have similar rankings, population, and speed distributed among the swimmers.
“We got put into the third tier, so all the teams are like our teams, which has made some really good competition,” Daughters said.
Along with competition, the WIAA rules have aimed to increase sportsmanship and self esteem. In past years Liberty has competed against nationally ranked swimmers. As a result of these new rules, one team can’t win without a fight while another team suffers losses over and over again.
“I never see anyone sitting on the benches, doing homework, or [being] on their phone,” Daughters said, “I see them cheering for their teammates. I don’t think there will be anything more memorable than that.”
