The JTHS West and Central girls JV swim team’s season is coming to an end. The team has worked so hard even though many things have been taken away. It truly has been a great experience for all the swimmers. 

This year, so many normality’s have been taken away from the team. First of all, practice times have been shortened by 15 minutes, which is valuable time. Also, the season has been shortened by almost a month! This cut out a lot of meets, practices, and even state competitions. 

JV conference, varsity conference, and sectionals are still happening. Two teams were picked, one for JV conference and one for varsity conference.  From the two conference teams, some of the fastest girls will go on to sectionals. 

The JV conference team started taper ten days before conference. Taper is when the girls work on dropping time by going on a diet and having more specialized practices. They also get to wear a tech suit, which makes them glide through the water faster. All of these things are to help the girls improve their times. 

The taper diet consists of eating no sugar and for most of it, no carbs. The last three days of taper you eat half carbs, mostly carbs, and then do carbo loading. Also, all week the girls try and do no physical activity except for swim practices. This helps the girls to not use as much energy during the week, so they have more energy for the meet. 

The JV conference was held on October 10th. There were no spectators and the teams stayed in some upstairs classrooms to limit the amount of people on the pool deck. For each event (What was being swam, 50,200,500, etc.)  there were three heats (The number of times the event was swam). The first heat was the slowest swimmers, the second was the in between swimmers, and the last was the fastest girls. Heats help keep the girls with the closest times swimming against each other. 

The girls broke seven of the team’s previous JV conference records. The only records not broken were for the 50 freestyle and the relays. This year, no relays were held to make sure that the swimmers were properly socially distanced on the pool deck. There were seven records broken, and five people hold these 2020 records. Sophomore Libby Ferak holds three of this year’s records. She holds the record for the 200 freestyle, the 100 butterfly, and the 100 backstroke. Daniela Perez holds the 100 breaststroke record. Jessica Cruz, who is a Senior, holds the record for the 100 freestyle. Addison Consalvo holds the record for the 200 I.M. And Anna Youell holds the record for the 500 freestyle. The girls’ coach, Nicholas Koenig, said,” The girls swam hard, and put together the best meet we have ever had, and demolished the JV records.” 

This has surely been a great season for the JV girls! They have worked so hard and had lots of fun! They dropped time and broke team records, which is a great way to end the season. Coach Nicholas Koenig said, ”We are very proud coaches and can’t wait to see what the future holds for this great group of girls.”

Additionally, Varsity Girls’ had their conference meet on October 17th. Congratulations to senior Julie Wang, All-Conference swimmer.