The 6A State Championship meet for the OHS swim team was Oct. 27, and both the boys’ and girls’ team came in fourth, which led to a third place victory overall for the team.

“This past weekend, we had the State Championship in Tupelo, and that was our final meet of the season. To get there, we had to qualify at the North Half State Championship,” head coach Robert Gonzales said. “We had a very short season and trained hard all the way through our North Half State Championship, then we had about a one week taper for those who qualified to get them rested up, as strong, as fast and as prepared as possible for this past Saturday.”

In preparation for the state meet, the teams follow a new training regime filling North Half and the week before the state meet.

“For swimming, we have something called a taper, which is the way our coach trains us to make sure our electrolytes are at their peak for performance day,” freshman Julia Dennis said. “That starts with a declining practice intensity and what we work on in practice.”

One of the girls team’s biggest accomplishments this season was beating Tupelo, who they haven’t beaten in eight years.

“We’ve really never been able to beat Tupelo in the girls’ 400 freestyle relay and that was able to happen this year,” Dennis said. “We kind of closed the gap that has been between the points between the girls teams.”

Senior co-captain Catherine Field has been swimming with the Oxford Swim Team since seventh grade, and her final state championship was one to remember.

“State was a big success, and everybody exceeded our expectations. That landed us fourth place which was really big for us. Our 200 freestyle relay got second which was huge, and 400 freestyle relay got second which wasn’t expected at all,” Field said. “The boys really exceeded our expectations too. They were seated eighth in some things and ended up getting third. It was just a really big, good, successful night.”

Gonzales was very pleased with the team’s performances and said that they couldn’t have done better job.

“It was the best meet I’ve ever had a team perform at any state championship in my coaching career, and I’ve coached for 11 years. This was by far the most positive outcome I’ve ever had in a meet. We just narrowly missed out of the girls runner-up position, but as far as the things we can control it was an amazing performance,” Gonzales said. “We can’t control the other teams, I would have liked to have gotten second place, but for what we can control, we did everything that we possible could have to have a great Saturday.”