By: Daniyal Habib <[email protected]>

Like most other students, junior Jessie Hammes would love to sleep as much as possible every morning before going to school. But being a dedicated varsity swimmer, she gets up early four mornings and goes to swim practice.

“As much as I would love to sleep in every morning and get up at 6:30 instead of 4:45, I know we wouldn’t be as good without all of that extra time,” Hammes said. “It hurts to get out of my warm bed in the morning, but I know it’s making me better, so I just do it, but not always with a smile on my face.”

With 21 consecutive State championships under its belt, the women’s swim team uses that extra morning time to its benefit.

“We try to take advantage of every minute we can in the water. With swimming, the ‘feel’ of the water is really important, but it can be lost quickly. We try to maintain that as well and just use the mornings to get more yardage and work in,” Hammes said.

The way the team looks at it, the beginning of the year is the time to improve. “The beginning of the year is all about making necessary changes in our strokes and our technique. It gets harder to change major things like that in the middle of the season, so we do it in the beginning. I, personally, would like to work on my turns and underwater work,” Hammes said.

Although the team is expected by fans to make a deep run in the state tournament, Hammes said that the team makes goals for each meet, which keeps them focused on the task ahead and not further down the road.

Although the road ahead is a very long one, Hammes said that this time of year is fun. “A new season is always fun because it’s a fresh start. You can forget about all the other stuff that’s happened and focus on the upcoming year. That’s not to say that past seasons haven’t helped; that knowledge definitely comes into play when we plan for the new season.”