Missouri’s aquatic life usually consists of catfish, bluegill, carp and other boring scaled fish, but at St. Charles High, it includes a team of teenage girls with goggles. They, despite not having gills or fins, are apparently very talented although few.

“We had a small team, just nine or 10 swimmers, but every swimmer swam their personal best this year,” Swim Coach Paul Wright said.

Swim season, which runs from December through February, produced many talented new and old swimmers, and from their winning record this season, they’re all hardworking.

“We beat many teams that were much, much larger, because I feel that our girls worked harder than some of the other schools,” Wright said.

Watching the students work to better their swimming makes the coaches proud, but it’s even more rewarding for the swimmers, especially the newer ones. 

“I really enjoyed getting better each time,” junior swimmer Lauren Tiedt said, “I liked learning all the strokes and how to do it properly.”

Even the senior swimmers have observed improvement in their swimming.

“This year I’d have to say on senior night I won all of my events and that’s a pretty big deal, it’s hard going against another team that’s really good so I enjoyed that part,” senior swim captain Emma Gilkinson said.

Because swimming only lasts for a season and not year-round, swimmers had to improve their swimming skills in a short amount of time. Wright believes that summer meets would give them more time to improve their skills. 

“I think that if we can get the girls swimming a little bit more year around so that when they came into the season they were already swim-shape,” Wright said.

Along with summer meets, the swim team could benefit from gaining more members.

“Only one senior left the swim team, but next year it’s going to be a lot,” Tiedt said.

Gilkinson thinks that the swim team should change the way that they recruit, due to recruitment usually being targeted towards freshmen at an orientation.

“Making swim more fun and less intimidating would definitely be helpful because swim shouldn’t be intimidating at all,” Gilkinson said.