The swim team hasn’t stepped on the right foot just yet but that doesn’t mean count them out. The record so far is 0-2 for the girl’s team and 1-1 for the boys. It is still early in the season and students have to get back into the rhythm of going back to swimming.
Playing a high school sport has a lot of benefits, especially swimming.
The first one is teamwork: Swim teams combine the best aspects of both team sports and individual sports. Plus, learning to both give and receive support from teammates is an important life lesson.
The second benefit is helping with mental health: Studies show that regular exercise reduces anxiety and stress.
The third benefit is self-motivation: Working hard and improving as part of a swim team will help with self-motivation to reach goals in additional parts of their lives.
Having self-motivation is a vital viewpoint to playing any game. Whether you’re playing for fun or for competition, having a high level of motivation is absolutely necessary. Research shows that having a high level of motivation can help your sporting performance more than you might think.
“Completing such a hard sport from start to finish is already motivational,” said senior swimmer Margaret Elmir. “But also the meets, it may make me crazy nervous but just finishing to see your time and being so proud of what you worked for.”
The swim team puts a lot of energy into the new season. Some days, they practice in the morning before school from 5:15 a.m. – 6:45 a.m. Then, they practice again after school from 2:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m./5:00 p.m. This could take a lot of mental strain on a student.
People deal with stress before a meet differently.
“Some people prefer to listen to music to calm their nerves, read, and others like to have fun before getting so ‘meet ready,’” said Elmir.
When it comes to sports, mental health is a crucial tool. A positive mental state makes it possible to make better decisions and overall better play. However, having a poor state can prompt sluggish and slow play.
Every team has weaknesses and strengths and the Spartan swim team is no exception. “I believe that some people tend to let their abilities get to their heads, and they get cocky,” said sophomore Sophie Kurbanov.
The main difference between confidence and cockiness is that confident athletes focus on team success while cockiness focuses on themselves. Confident people look for ways to contribute and see themselves as a part of the whole, whereas cocky athletes focus on personal statistics more than team play ,and they have issues building relationships with teammates.
But the team does have some strengths “Our team’s strength is definitely the unity we have,” said Elmir. “Most of us are from some sort of school band, so most of us are already comfortable with each other.”
