On January 23 the Leesville Swim Team competed at the Cap-7 meet. The women’s team won first place and the men’s team secured third place.
Ms. Bunch, the coach, was pleased. “I hoped the girls would win, and they did, so I’m satisfied with that. I thought the boys would be close with Sanderson, but I was pretty sure Enloe would win—they’ve always won since 1999.”
Even though Enloe won with a score of 515, the Leesville boys were close behind Sanderson’s 361 points, winning third place with a score of 290.
Austin Layman, one of the men’s captains, said the team was content with third place. “Enloe has always been good, so we just wanted to beat Sanderson. Even though that didn’t happen I’m still pretty satisfied with our performance.”
According to Ms. Bunch, Leesville did extremely well, considering out of 40 events, the team only had enough boys to enter in 28 events. “If we had enough boys to enter in all the events, I think we could have placed much higher.” In the Cap-7 meet points are scored up to 14th place, so if Leesville had a larger bench, they would have had the potential to score many more points.
Despite the smaller boys team, eight boys qualified for the regional competition, including: Harrison Carter, Connor Blevins, Charlie Barker, Jordon Arata, Matthew Hurley, Scott Johnson, Spencer Pennington, and Chris Pollenz.
As for the girls’ team, winning the Cap-7 meet was a rewarding experience for all.
Charlsie Lincoln, junior, said, “We were mainly concerned about Enloe, they’re our rival, so we really wanted to beat them. The feeling after we won was just awesome! Plus, we already made T-shirts that said, ‘Cap-7 Champs’, so the pressure was on!”
Hannah Stephenson, junior, felt no such pressure, swimming her way to a 1st place victory in the 100 backstroke and breaking the school record.
“I didn’t even realize how fast I was going at first; I just wanted to win. Then when I got home I checked the record and realized that I had just broken it!”
Although not all team members broke school records, there were still significant individual accomplishments.
Abby Vance, senior, placed second in both the 100 and 500 freestyle.
