The boys swimming team has begun their second season under head coach Andy Rider and are hoping to have an even more successful season compared to last year after placing fourth at the state meet.
After a very successful season last year the boys swimming team will be losing two strong leaders and swimmers. Seniors Kaden Guzman and Nate Germonprez left a very big impression on Westside swimming and Cartwright thinks that if the team puts their mind to it they can fill the roles Guzman and Germonprez left.
“Losing Kaden and Nate definitely has its drawbacks, of course when you lose two very insane swimmers there will be a setback in the overall point performance but that doesn’t mean we can’t improve and close that gap.” Cartwright said. “I would say our team mindset at this moment is to strive to be great, be the best team we can be, to show that with losing two key players we can still demonstrate our overall strength and power when it comes to these meets.”
With a strong upperclass and growing underclass, head coach Andy Rider is not concerned about who will fill the roles that Nate and Kaden left.
“We are missing Nate and Kaden this year, we’ll definitely take a hit to our team,” Rider said. “But we have many seniors this year, and juniors, a few sophomores and then we’ve seen a few freshmen that are definitely going to all contribute and step up, fill those roles.”
For Rider seeing his swimmers perform and having success in the water is what he wants to see.
“My ultimate goal is for kids just to perform better, I want to see kids succeed,” Rider said.
With a new set of captains on the team, the team is becoming more and more bonded and is working on making a culture of participation at practice.
“We have just started cracking down on even after our first team practice is the thought of doing everything together, to be a team,” Cartwright said. “With one of our team captains Aidan Cunningham, he has made the move to finish our practices with full participation.”
As the boys team continues to grow, bonding is very important and doing so will help improve the whole team’s mindset and performance.
“The idea is that we as a team will do the warm down as a group no matter if you finished practice early or have 30 minutes to kill,” Cartwright said. “I strongly believe that these moves made by our team captains with the idea of strengthening our team participation will have positive results in our overall performance.”For Cartwright this season holds a lot of excitement, from big personal records to more swimming experience at the high school level he is ready to take on this season.
“I am more excited in the field of personal improvement,” Cartwright said. “I want to show the team what I can and will be capable of as a fast swimmer so that gives me the motivation to go on.”
After coach Rider’s first year, Cartwright was satisfied with his coaching style.
“The first year with Andy was great, I wouldn’t have changed anything,” Cartwright said. “With his second year of being our head coach I look forward to building more of a swimmer to coach relationship.”
Eyes are on gold and Rider is hoping that they can take more swimmers to the state meet in Lincoln at the Devaney Center.
“Hopefully they have an opportunity to hit one of the time standards and travel down to Lincoln with us,” Rider said.
