The Lions swim team kept the dynasty alive after winning their fourth SPC championship in the past five years.
According to Aquatics Director and swimming Head Coach Trenton Calder, going into the season the team knew what they had to do.
“We were going to absolutely dominate,” Calder said. “At the beginning of the season, the guys threw around words like dynasty.”
And in the team’s mind, keeping the dynasty was a certainty until one slight change was made to the SPC scoring system. Athletes normally get four swims: two individuals and two relays. This year, teams got three individual swims.
“That immediately threw a wrench in everything because our team is so deep,” Calder said. Whereas a school with a team like St. Stephens, which has five really good swimmers, gets 10 good swims out of that 15.”
With the additional rule change, the team became more aware of the need to step up, and it started with the seniors.
“All of them were giving us points,” Calder said. “They really stepped up in the water.”
Not only did the team step up in the water, but they did in other important key aspects as well.
“Looking at one of our captains, senior Adrian Lutgen, he just did a great job keeping everyone calm and collected,” Calder said. “One of our other seniors, Ethan Gao, was a great vocal leader.”
Lutgen, Gao and the team were all determined to come out on top. Lutgen feels that last year’s victory played an important role in shaping their mindset.
“It gave us a trophy to look at through the window,” Lutgen said. “It was a real example of an end goal.”
Despite the team’s tenacious drive and abundance of talent, occasionally the team would lose focus. Calder made sure this wasn’t a common occurrence.
“Coach did a great job of keeping us motivated,” Lutgen said. “Whenever we would slack off he would be the one that would get us back in line. With our talented roster it would be easy for some kids to get a big head, but Coach did a good job of keeping us in line and making sure we were all focused on the same goal.”
While Calder was a calming force all season, his workload outside of the pool became increasingly heavy the week before SPC.
“It was rough,” Calder said. “The team was getting way more rest because right before competition intensity goes up, the rest goes up, and the volume goes down. Now all these guys have way more time and are all energetic and excited for SPC. They were scurrying around a lot more. So the last two weeks for me was very much keeping them in line.”
Despite Calder having to tame the team’s excitement outside of the water, in the water their additional energy was showing up in the numbers.
“We had guys doing things in practice they hadn’t done all year,” Calder said. “They would swim and be shocked because the time would be a second off their personal best. That was just in practice so imagine what that was going to be when we got to a faster pool and had adrenaline pumping. We were very excited about that.”
Going into SPC the team was energized and ready to compete. After the first five events the Lions were tied up. Heading into the 100-freestyle and the 500-freestyle the other team made a strong push and jumped ahead of the lions. Now down a few points, the two freestyle relays went into their race with an extra sense of determination and swam well, bringing the team back to where they needed to be. Then it was time for the 100-breast group and 100-back group to step up for the team, but they did more than just that.
“They absolutely torched the competition,” Calder said. “They put us up 17 points going into the final relay and basically did their jobs better than they should have. All we had to do was not get disqualified.”
As Calder looks towards the future of the team, he believes there is a bright future ahead.
“They want to continue these championships and this is a very talented group that should be able to do it again,” Calder said.
