By: Daniyal Habib <[email protected]>

The women’s swimming team has one of the nation’s longest active State championship streaks for any sport, at 21 in a row. Jessie Hammes, varsity swimmer and junior, said that even with all of the success, she still finds ways to stay motivated and go out and win more.

“Goals are the best thing to keep me going,” Hammes said. “I have long-term goals that will take a while to accomplish, and then I have short-term goals to keep me on track. We try to motivate each other as a team, too. If someone is having a hard day, we try to remind each other what we’re working for.”
Swimming Head Coach Chris Plumb said that the previous teams motivate them to be even better.

“We are motivated to be the best that we can be. The swimmers and teams that came before us only motivate us to do better,” Plumb said.

Even though the team has earned its stripes with its amazing run, Hammes said that she and the entire team still have to prove themselves.

“As an individual I’m always working to improve my times and my place at State. The ultimate goal is to score points for the team. As a team, I think it’s important to prove that we can still do well even though we lost a lot of powerful seniors,” Hammes said.

As for this year, the rest of the team will have to step up after the loss of 11 seniors from last year, including five who were part of the State team.

“I know that the loss of our seniors will be hard, but we have a lot of new freshmen who are willing to step up. The competition from other teams will be really intense this year,” Hammes said.

Past championships raise expectations and the pressure to perform, but Hammes said she thinks of it a different way. “We try to think of it as 21 years of support instead of 21 years of pressure. But there’s still a lot of pressure because we don’t want to let everyone down, and it’s hard to know that there are a lot of other teams rooting against us.

“To be honest, I have no idea (how far this year’s team can go). If we keep pushing ourselves the way we have been, I think we can do anything,” Hammes said. Plumb said the seniors will be key. “The key will be senior leadership. Our seniors have to be hardest working both in and out of the pool, leaders in the locker room, and believe in what we are doing. If the seniors are leading like I know that they are capable of, we will be great.”