The Westside Warriors swim and dive team will kick off their season on Thursday Dec. 3. They will face off against Millard West for their first meet. Due to Covid-19, Metro wide swim and dive teams have come to a compromise in order to implement student safety and social distancing. For their first meet, Westside will swim and dive at their pool while Millard West will swim and dive at theirs. To determine a winner for swimming events they will compare times clocked separately at each competitors pool. For diving it is more complicated. There will be different officials at each place giving divers their score. Sophomore Kaden Guzman says the meet will be like racing at practice. 

“It’s definitely gonna be different and something we’ve never experienced before but, I don’t think it will be any different than racing in practice. In practice we try to shoot for best times as much as we can,” said Guzman. 

Due to Covid-19, all sports are having to readjust and change things up, especially swimming. Guzman believes the team will have to overcome the idea of racing someone from a different school next to you.

“I try to use the people I’m racing next to me as motivation and it’ll be hard this year but other swimmers and I on the team simply must improvise, overcome and adapt,” said Guzman. 

Along with swim, diving will have different judges at each school judging the diver. Unlike usual, the score will be up to separate judges instead of a single set. Sophomore diver, Lydia Frost isn’t worried about different judges. 

“I’m not that nervous about the different judges. I trust the coaches and adults that score us because they know what they’re doing,” said Frost. 

Frost is happy to be able to compete at Westside during this virtual meet, she says it’s because of her comfort with Westside’s pool.

“I think diving at Westside will be easier. When I go to another school for a meeting I tend to get more nervous. I’m not used to the boards so it takes me a little longer in warm ups. I’m also not used to the atmosphere. When diving you have to look at a certain spot so you know where your dive is going to land. The spots at Westside compared to other schools are different so I’m glad I’ll be more comfortable at Westside pool,” said Frost.

The Westside Warriors Swim and Dive meet starts at 4:30 at Westside against Millard West.