The OHS swim team recently concluded their season strong competing at the state championship meet and breaking many school records.

“This season was super exciting for us,” senior Gates Allen said. “A lot of unknowns going into the season, even though we returned almost the same exact team only graduating one senior. With our coach leaving and our graduating senior being a key contributor, we had some questions to answer this season and it was fun to be a part of the team in somewhat of a transition year.”

Coach Hayley Murphy took the role as head coach this season after previous coach, Robert Gonzalez, accepted a new job. The decision of Murphy becoming the head coach was well liked among the team as she had been there for years,and was able to lead this team well.

“There are a few differences but we also had a lot of continuity between the old coach and our new coach,” Allen said. “Our current head coach has been with the team since I was in seventh grade and coached the younger swimmers prior to her promotion to head coach, so there was a lot of familiarity with her and she knew the team well so she was able to model practices in a way that would be very beneficial for us.”

The team took preparation very seriously this season, beginning practice far before the season began.

“Our high school training block started on the first day of school and we swam every day from 3:30 p.m.-5:30p.m. and lifted after practice twice a week,” Allen said. “In August, it is a bit of a reset for the summer season, but by mid-September and into early October we are swimming super fast in practice and working really hard. We start to taper off our yardage and intensity as we get closer to state championships so the 10 or so days leading up to our final meet are not quite as intense as we start to rest up for that meet.”

The success of the team was to no surprise as they have been successful in the past and worked to continue the legacy

“I wasn’t really surprised, I think this is the most talented roster we have had on the boys side in team history,” Allen said. “Obviously we’ve had some really great swimmers come through over the last 26 years since the program started, but just a diversity of skill sets and a lot of really fast swimmers so we were in a great position to do some big things going into the year. I’m really proud of how hard some of our underclassmen worked to be contributors this year and obviously it all paid off setting some school records, which is really exciting.”