As the third week of practice comes to a close for Asbury’s men’s and women’s swim teams, the teams continue to work toward a season filled with uncertainty. Still, it’s the sport and team that still matter.
“My favorite part of swimming is definitely the community aspect of the team and how we love one another and support one another,” said senior Hannah Springer. “When you’re swimming a race and you look over and your whole team is there supporting you on, it is just so incredible.”
Springer and many other swimmers’ favorite part of the season is being taken away to some degree this year. Practices are split into morning and evening sessions, and each swimmer is assigned to only attend one session. The entire team is rarely together. Springer says coach Alex Keyser has kept the team together.
“Honestly, it’s the coolest I’ve ever seen him, just being so attuned to the needs and desires of his people and how he can work with us to ensure that we know that we are loved and chosen by him,” said Springer. “On Saturdays, we’re not practicing as much and so we’re just having fun and we’re playing games to keep the morale high. He just allows us to laugh a lot. We’ve been having a safe gathering, utilizing our group message so all of those things to keep our spirits high.”
Due to COVID-19, a schedule has not been set. There is no word from the Appalachian Athletic Conference or the NAIA about competition.
“It’s kind of like okay we’re training but for what you know so it takes away kind of the competitive drive of it,” said Springer.
As this season’s uncertainty looms, seniors are trying to reorient their goals and priorities. Instead of setting goals in the water, they are more focused on bringing along the freshmen, working on teammate relationships and working on themselves as individuals for life after collegiate swimming.
However, this does not remove the desire to compete and to be in the water this season, especially after the end of last season. “Last year our nationals weren’t the greatest,” said senior Ronan Passman. “We had our coach get really sick prior to [the national meet] and a lot of the swimmers did not swim to the capacity that they were able to. So this is a redemptive year, even though COVID has kind of made a little whack. I think this year we’re going to pull out an awesome win if we can do these competitions and do it well.”
