This year at the Georgia High School Association 6A State Swimming and Diving meet the Etowah swim team boys’ finished first place in county and girls in second.

The coaches, Elizabeth Crook, a teacher at E.T. Booth Middle school, Denise Danielson, teacher at Etowah High School and Virginia Diederich, a teacher at Oak Grove Elementary School conclude that the main goal of the swim team is to score as many points as possible to win their season meets, and improve technique to become stronger swimmers overall.

“This season was different because our boys did better than our girls, usually it goes the other way around,” Diederich, head coach of the swim team, said.

Swimmers practice daily, usually swimming for an hour and completing different drills. Practices are regularly broken up into sessions- newer swimmers work on technique, older and experienced swimmers spend more time on improving their times.

Each individual swimmer set a goal of earning points at meets in order to letter in swimming. To work towards their goals, each swimmer practices a specific technique in the event they swim in to as many points as they can.

“Weekly workouts are designed to help swimmers become better to achieve personal best times, therefore helping the team score points,” Crook, said.

According the Crook, while preparing for a meet, the team tries to schedule events with available swimmers to score as many points possible. The coaches try to balance how many swimmers are at each meet so all of the different level swimmers are able to compete regularly.

All of the swimmers did a great job competing at the State Championships. Most swimmers achieved their personal best times in their individual sets.