The boys swim team, dormant during warm months and active during the cold winter, stepped up their game for the 2014-2015 season. In previous years, the team has worked hard to become a strong contender in the Minnesota State High School League’s Section 2A. Having finished the previous two season with a losing record only winning one meet out of eight, the team has since made improvements to their performance.

In recent years, the boy’s swim team struggled to contend with the bigger schools in their section. While the team was composed of several strong swimmers over the past two seasons, the depth within the team had a negative impact during meets. “We’ve had a really small team in comparison to our competitors these past two seasons,” senior captain Patrick Hunter said. “We only had something like 16 swimmers on our team, allowing the other teams to overcome us at meets in sheer numbers.”

At the end of the 2012-2013 season, the team suffered the loss of senior swimmers Alex Roe and Brian Weaver. This loss only made a short-term impact on the team however, as plenty of new talent was ready to step up to fill their places. “Losing Alex and Brian made an impact on the team, but we were able to quickly recover,” Hunter said. “We were able to develop many freshmen last season, helping the team as a whole this year.”

Despite these losses, the swim team has worked hard to bring themselves to their current record of four and three for the 2014-2015 season. “We’ve had a great season so far,” senior captain Kyle Johnson said. “We’ve seen many newcomers step up in recent years as major contenders. Swimmers like Tommy McGinn, Tyler Metz, and Henri Schmidt have worked to bring the team to where we are this season.”

Johnson went on to talk of these swimmers in previous seasons, as well as their current goals to break many school records set by previous swimmers at BSM. As far for the rest of the season goes, Johnson and his fellow captains have a few goals he would like to see met by his teammates. “The captains would really like to see the boy’s team make it to the state championship with a top three finish,” Johnson said. “We had six swimmers qualify last year and we’d like to see at least that many make it this year.”

Contrary to most team sports, the MSHSL allows for both teams as well as individual competitors to qualify for the state tournament in March. “You don’t exactly qualify for state as  a team like you do in other sports,” Hunter said.  “Essentially everybody who qualifies make it as individuals, and some of these individuals are on relay teams.”  As far as the rest of the season goes, Hunter was optimistic on his vision for the team these last couple weeks. “We’ve got sections coming up, and we’re looking forward to some really fast swims and hopefully sending some swimmers on to state.”