Problems that began in the boys swim season were not resolved in time for the girls swim season, causing them to start off their season differently than most other schools. The swimmers managed to make the best of the pool problems, and made alterations to their practices that ended up being beneficial.

Initially, the main problem was that the the surface by the pool wasn’t coarse enough and was causing swimmers to slip. Over winter break, workers came in and gave it  more texture, but they couldn’t get it enough and ended up putting green mats on the floor that will stay there until summer, which is when the floors are getting redone.

During the boys swim season, the filter went out on their last week during state. The filter problem ran into March and interfered with the girls swim season, and set them back this. For the first week of their season, the girls practiced at the Blue Valley West pool from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m., after the girl’s team at BV West finished their practices.

“By the time we finally had a place to practice [BV West], it had delayed our season because we were farther behind other teams,” junior Jordan Brehmer said.

With practices at a later time and different location, the size of the team was also affected. Conflicts with busy schedules arose and prevented more girls from trying out for the swim team, resulting in a smaller team than expected.

“The main problem with the late practices at West was that a lot of people couldn’t go because of other schedule conflicts, so we have a much smaller team than we had thought we would,” Brehmer said.

Positives have come out of the situation, too. For the first week of practices, the team did a lot of bonding games and team builders. They came together and had land practices, strengthening skills that would otherwise be ignored in water workouts.

“We really came together as a team during the first week,” Brehmer said. “We did some team builders instead of practices, and when we did practice at West, we were all there together going through it.”

While the pool being broken caused numerous complications throughout the season, the girls made the best of the problem, and the pool is  almost completely fixed. Even though the problems were inconvenient, it all turned out okay for the team and gave them a bond that they wouldn’t have otherwise had a chance to have.