Westside’s varsity swim and dive competed in Metro Conference Championships on Friday and Saturday. With the State meet approaching fast, this was the athletes last chance to make qualifying times to be in the State meet. Not only was the pressures to win on the athlete’s minds, but also the pressure to hopefully swim fast enough to secure their spots on Westside’s 2018 State team.

At a meet like Metro, Friday is prelims so the athletes main goal is to make in the top 16 so they can swim in finals to score points the following day. The higher a swimmer places, the more points is received for the team.

There were many swims from Westside swimmers at the Metro meet, including the 100 freestyle with a first place finish from senior Jon Gouge,r and a second place finish from sophomore Thomas Lundin.

“We’ve been working really hard all year and going into the 100 free me and Jon were ranked one and two so it was a really big goal of ours to go one and two again during finals,” Lundin said.

Westside boys finished first, breaking Creighton Prep’s ten year winning streak; the girls finished third.

“We swam really well on Friday and came back and swam better on Saturday across the board,” head swimming coach Doug Krecklow said. “Too often [teams] struggle to come back and swim well on Saturday.”

The teams are preparing to give their all for the State meet approaching in the near future.

“[These last two weeks leading up to state] we will work on getting ready mentally. We’ve done all the hard work and now we have to rest,” Krecklow said. “Most importantly we’ve got to prepare mentally so that everything that we’ve done physically is going to be ready to go emotionally and mentally.”

Varsity swim and dive will compete in at Nebraska State High School Championships on Feb. 22-24 at the Bob Devaney Sports Center in Lincoln.

Photo Gallery by: Alex Estopare