by Neil Sharma
Staff Writer

This winter, the swim team will be starting the season with spectacular swimmers from all grades. About forty students tried out, and twelve of the forty swimmers on the team this year are freshmen.

“Many of [the freshmen] joined club programs as younger swimmers so they should be able to compete at the varsity level right away,” said head coach Caitlin Klick.

Klick, who has been head coach for seven seasons, has some big expectation for the swimmers trying out for the swim team. The swimmers should be able to be competitive in all four strokes [breast, freestyle, back stroke, butterfly] and also must be able to do challenging intervals for about one and a half hours.

This year the WA swim team will be competing in 14 dual meets: the DCL meet, the North sectional championships at MIT, and the state meet at Harvard. Klick says that WA’s team will have to be very competitive.

“We should be very competitive in both the DCL and in the state. We have 25 girls that will really raise the level of the team as a whole. There are only 15 boys this year, but many of them are top swimmers,” Klick said.

This season, WA has rivalries with teams such as Wayland, Weston, and Lincoln Sudbury. They also have a rivalry with Chelmsford in their non-league meet.

Swimmers this year are going to have to be determined, dedicated, and wanting to become better.

“The combination of hard work and dedication always seems to pay off for swimmers at the end of the season. The kids that put in the most work each day at practice always see the biggest results at our championships,” Klick said.

Of all of the goals this season, the most important is that the swimmers will become successful for the season.

“If each swimmer leaves the season with at least one personal best time the season has been successful. Last year we also had a state champion in Matt Tynan and individual school records set by Kelly Huber. We are hoping to add more state champions to the list and bring down a few more records,” Klick said.