After her morning practice ends, Lacey Locke, women’s varsity swimmer and senior, joins the rest of her 105 teammates in the locker room before school starts.

Locke said, “It can get kind of hectic because there are a lot of girls screaming and running around; it gets kind of crowded.”

According to women’s swimming Head Coach Chris Plumb, the team has gained around 25 swimmers from the previous year.

“The large amount of athletes on the team can cause the management to become difficult at times,” Plumb said.

Because the men’s and women’s swimming and diving seasons occur during the same time period, there is limited pool space for both teams, forcing them to share this school’s 24 lanes among one another.

Plumb said, “Trying to get everybody in with the girl’s and boy’s team at the same time is definitely a challenge.”

As a result, practice times in the pool are varied among the women’s swimming and diving team. According to Locke, the team is divided into four groups based on skill level.

Locke said, “Some groups will be in the weight room when some of the other groups will be swimming. There’s definitely a compromise of in the water and out of the water time amongst the groups.”

Women’s swimming and diving is not the first sport at this school to experience issues related to too many athletes. Men’s and women’s cross-country teams also faced the issue of too many athletes, which caused management to become difficult for coaches.

Athletics Director Jim Inskeep said, “We were up to 144 boys in our cross-country program with only three paid coaches, which creates a number of issues for supervision of those student athletes. A number of our student athletes were treating it more as a run club, kind of an intramural sport, rather than something that they are ready to be dedicated to, which makes it difficult to run a varsity program.”

The cross-country teams have already transitioned to cut sports so that coaches can efficiently manage the team. The cuts were implemented two years ago and were based on time standards per grade level.

According to Inskeep, the idea of time standards is not to eliminate kids that are willing to participate in sports here, but to reduce the team to a number that is more manageable for coaches.

Although changing women’s swimming and diving to a cut sport may improve the supervision and management of athletes by coaches, it has its drawbacks as well. According to Locke, by implementing cuts, the team won’t have the same chemistry as it does now.

Plumb said, “I think (having women’s swimming and diving as a no-cut sport) gives everybody an opportunity in the school to participate in varsity sports. The more people we have on the team, the more people there are that can support each other and to make us the best that we can be.”

According to Locke, not only do sports provide students with extracurricular activities, they also help students develop time management skills by learning to handle all their school work between attending practices and meets.

Locke said, “I think (having women’s swimming and diving as a non-cut sport) gives people a great opportunity to get involved in something at the school.”

According to Inskeep, a key factor in determining whether to make a non-cut sport a cut sport is whether it is in the best long-term interest of the program. Inskeep said he looks at how many people there are in the Carmel Swim Club coming up through that level in order to foresee if a bigger issue is coming.

Inskeep said, “For the 2012-2013 school year, we don’t have any plans to change any non-cut sports to cut sports. We’re not building another pool so that’s one issue, and we can’t stagger practice times because the pool is maxed out in terms of its scheduling right now.”