This week, Haines Dolphins swimmers are headed to Anchorage to compete in state swimming championships.
The number of races each swimmer participates in is directly tied to their performance, so it’s not yet clear how many races they’ll compete in. But head coach Jacob Bazar has some idea of what they’ll start in, based on qualifying times from other meets throughout the team’s nine-month season.
He said 16-year-old McConnell Robinson – the team’s sole high school swimmer – will be competing in the 50 and 100 yard breaststroke, 50 and 100 yard freestyle, 100 butterfly and 100 backstroke.
During his last meet in Juneau in early April, Robinson saw improvements in most of those categories, swimming the 100-yard free in 55:50, the breast in 1:11:29 and the 50-yard free in 24.86.
“McConnel [Robinson] has been working on his butterfly. This past meet he lost six seconds, which is a ton at his age,” Bazar said.
Bazar, who said he also excelled in butterfly as a swimmer in Texas, has been working on the advanced stroke with all of the swimmers this year, particularly in helping with their kicks.
“I’ve seen improvement across the board on that,” he said. “Butterfly is my favorite stroke. Once you get it, it’s super fun. Once you get it you feel like you’re flying through the water,” he said.
One of the swimmers who has picked up on the stroke is 13-year-old Sita Price.
“Sita has a good butterfly for her age,” Bazar said. She’ll be competing in the 100 butterfly, 100 and 50 freestyle and likely the 100 fly.
Price’s best time at the 50-yard freestyle came last year during the Alaska State Championships where she swam it in 30:03, while her best time in the 100 freestyle is 1:08:47. Her best 100-yard butterfly time is 1:21.72.
Jonah Wray could compete in both 100- and 50-yard freestyle and breaststroke. He took first during the Juneau meet in the 50-yard free, coming in at 27:17. His 50-yard breaststroke last timed out at 39:43.
Hazel Wray, 10, will be competing in the 500-yard freestyle. During the Juneau meet, she swam that in 7:35:20.
“She has a great breaststroke and good butterfly,” Bazar said.
She’ll also swim in the 50 and 100 freestyle, the 50 and 100 butterfly, the 100 breast and the 100 individual medley.
Lylah Wray, 13, took first in the 100-yard free race in Juneau, with a time of 1:06:43. During state championships she’ll be competing in 100 breaststroke, 100 freestyle and 50 freestyle.
Bazar stepped in as head coach this year, replacing competitive swimmer Sydney Wray who led the club team for three years.
“She made it extremely easy for me to focus on just the kids … and just how I was coaching and what I was coaching,” Bazar said. “And then literally being there anytime. I could text her and she would postpone bleeding out to answer some questions.”
Bazar said the two make a good team together as Wray has focused on the administration of the team.
“She just does a great job handling the parents and the board and making sure it’s easy for me to focus on being a coach and being there for the kids,” he said.
Bazar is new to coaching. He said he focused on teaching the students how to be more mindful. During practice that means giving them enough time between practice sets to think about what went wrong during the previous one, so they could work on trying to fix it during the next one.
“Trying to put them into the mindset of – every 25 [yards] is a chance to improve,” he said.
Bazar said he also worked to get them thinking about how to use all of their energy.
“Especially with the 50 freestyle and the 100 freestyle … most people can swim both of those events much faster than they think they can,” he said. “It’s more of a mental game than it is even a physical game. It’s being able to consistently tell yourself ‘I need to go faster.’ Those are such short races that you’re not going to run out of energy. It might feel like you are, but you’re not.”
Swimming is often a solo sport, but Bazar said one area the team has excelled in this year is encouraging each other.
“I got to see it at this past meet,” he said. “That meet was really fun. They’re really good at just going up to each other at the blocks or cheering each other one, being the people that scream the loudest compared to everybody else. Even though we’re a small team, they did a really good job of that.”