By Eugenio Torrens
High school swim and dive teams may not fill the stands like their football counterparts, but at Sunlake the sport is respected.
And now, it’s more appreciated than ever.
The Seahawks (3-1) have started out strong despite losing 13 seniors combined from the boys and girls teams, exactly what coach Glenna Chamberlain was hoping for.
“We have a lot of freshmen coming in showing a lot of promise,” Chamberlain said. “The experience is going to take us a while to rebuild.”
Chamberlain is counting on the upper classmen to teach and work with the younger swimmers on techniques and strokes. She has credited this year’s seniors with setting the example, and said they “worked their tails off in the summer this offseason, so I was pleasantly surprised.”
Among those seniors are team captains D.J. Sarrett, Austin Van Vliet and Savannah Mattox. They all participated in club teams during the summer. In fact, club teams are a main source of improvement for the Seahawks.
“You have to be lucky with who comes to your school,” Mattox said. “It’s definitely about luck of kids that swim for clubs, that end up at your school. You get most of your work done at club teams, I think.”
And those that aren’t in club teams learn quickly it’s the best place to improve.
“The kids who end up coming back, season after season, have started joining club teams because of our high school teams,” Mattox said.
Van Vliet, who last year placed eighth at states in the 200-yard freestyle and 16th in the 400-yard freestyle, said swimming on a club team paid immediate dividends.
“I started high school, and I wasn’t very good,” Van Vliet said. “But then I started a club team, and then the next year I came back and I made states.”
The emphasis on club teams is made even more apparent when the Seahawks swim against Land O’ Lakes, their cross-town rival.
Sunlake’s lone loss on the season was to Land O’ Lakes on Sept. 21. The Seahawks have never beaten the Gators in a meet, and the swimmers attribute that to the Gators’ depth.
Last year, the Seahawks claimed more first-place finishes in their meet against Land O’ Lakes, but the Gators tallied more total points to earn the victory.
Chamberlain and her team are thankful just to have the chance to keep the rivalry going, something that was recently jeopardized.
Earlier this year, the Land O’ Lakes Recreation Complex, home pool for both Sunlake and Land O’ Lakes, was almost shut down.
“The Land O’ Lakes Lightning club team is taking over management,” Chamberlain said. “If they didn’t do that, we wouldn’t be able to stay.”
If the complex had shut down, coaches aren’t sure if the team would have been able to stay afloat.
“There aren’t enough community pools in Florida. It’s very sad,” said diving coach Vicki Anderson.
The only other alternative was to go to other facilities, such as the YMCA in Northdale or Trinity, and rent pool time, but that would have been too expensive. In addition to paying to rent pool time, transportation would have been costly as well.
Sunlake travels to Wesley Chapel on Wednesday, Sept. 28 at 6 p.m.
