East High Lightning: Scarlet Swimmers on the Rise

Madison Stout, Writer

Water splashing everywhere, people hooting and hollering, and you can feel the Scarlet spirit rising into the air as records are broken left and right by state qualifiers. This is what happens at an East High School’s girls’ swim meets.

The girls’ swim team is a group filled with passion, speed, and grit. This group of girls come from different backgrounds and circumstances. Sadly, this doesn’t seem to get recognized as much as it should.

“I do not think that high school swimming gets the attention it deserves at all…. no one comes to support,” sophomore MaryKate Walling said. Walling has been swimming her whole life. Walling has been swimming since she was less than a year old.

To some swimming might not be the most interesting sport but it takes just as much effort and just the same amount of work as any other sport; such as football, basketball or baseball.

“It would be nice to  have swimming become more popular like football and basketball. Swimming is a very physically demanding sport that requires lots of endurance and works your entire body all of the time, very similar to wrestling. Football and basketball are also physically demanding, but in different ways. There are no breaks every few seconds, nor can you breath whenever you want. Like any sport the season is a grind, but the main payoff is at the end at our championship meets where swimmers usually swim personal record times and hopefully qualify for the state meet,” Assistant Coach Dustin Cassler said. Cassler was a swimmer in high school and now the boys’ varsity swim coach and the girls’ assistant coach.

Anna Liu, senior, record breaker, and state qualifier feels that high school swimming doesn’t think that swim gets the support from the student section of East High. “Swimming rarely gets as much recognition as football and basketball does. For example, when the girls’ basketball team made it to State a few years ago, they had a whole student section there to support them, and that’s great!” She said. “But when both the boys’ and girls’ swim team made it to State, only swimmers and family members were there to support us,” Liu said.

So, as the girls’ season wraps up and the boys’ season kicks off, let’s show the swim team the love and support these hard working individuals deserve.