Max Niblett

South’s conjoined swim team takes a close victory over their rival team, Southwest, putting them in the lead of the conference.

Expectations were high for South’s team, TMT and Southwest going into the meet at Phillips community center, home pool for TMT. TMT and Southwest are rival teams and this meet’s outcome decided the conference champion. After TMT’s win over Southwest, the team is all but guaranteed to tie for the conference championship with Saint Anthony, both teams having one tie and the rest wins.

Despite the loss on behalf of southwest, both teams left the meet feeling good about their performance. Southwest captain, Gus Rudenick, shares “Even though TMT still beat us, we still did really really well, we all dropped a ton of time. TMT just ended up beating us.” Sophomore South swimmer Emery Taylor elaborated “Yeah I mean it’s like my coach said, we killed it. Most of us got personal records and the energy was amazing especially since we ended up beating our rivals.”

Regarding practice leading up to this meet, Taylor stated; “I think we’ve worked a little harder at practice than usual just so we had the best chance possible to beat our rival team.” The meet being against the rival team, paired with having such a big impact on conference rankings, really pushed everyone on TMT to go above and beyond. The same was true about the people on the Southwest team. Rudenick said “We were super hyped at practice but we had to rein it in a little bit so we didn’t get too worn out before the big meet.”

Taylor further shared; “The student section was about double the people that we normally would see.” This increase in size of the student section was largely due to the fact that this was a district wide swim meet, TMT representing South, Washburn, and Roosevelt and Southwest representing Southwest, Henry, Edison, and North. Taylor says that “Hearing people cheering really helped motivate all of us and helped us swim faster.” As the season approaches its end, the Sections meet, TMT wishes  to see the attendance numbers stay steady or even increase with hope that it will further benefit their performance.