As section champions, girls’ synchro hopes to defend this title again facing the challenges of losing many seniors last year, while joining a new conference.

Head coach Jessica Gust said she is especially excited to start the season in the new Metro West conference considering the old conference had no other synchro teams.

“The new conference actually has a couple of teams that have synchro so we’ll swim against Richfield, Bloomington and Prior Lake,” Gust said.

According to Gust the chances of winning these meets are pretty good. Richfield lacks the number of girls, Bloomington can be good depending on the year, and Prior Lake keeps its routines very similar to years past.

Junior Emma Breyak has been varsity since seventh grade and is excited for this rebuilding year and to see how the team will do compared to years past.

“I think our team will do really well this year. We did lose a lot of seniors last year but I feel like we can come back from that strong and use it as motivation to stay on top of our game,” Breyak said.

After losing so many seniors last year, Breyak said she believes the dynamic of the team will change.

“The junior high girls in club have done a great job recruiting more girls so we will end up having more people than last year which is always exciting. The dynamic of the team will definitely change because of this but in a good way,” Breyak said.

The girls spend a lot of time together with their rigorous practice schedule practicing two times a day, six days a week, adding up to 34 hours per week. Breyak said she enjoys this time together.

“Your teammates truly become some of your closest friends and you really get to connect with them and laugh, cry and learn together after spending so much time with each other,” Breyak said.

Although the girls lack other teams numbers like Wayzata, Stillwater and Edina, which have roughly two times as many girls, they make up for it with practices, according to Breyak.

“The team we are closest to in the conference is Edina and even though they have more girls than us we have more practices and I think that is what gives us better scores,” Breyak said.

These extra practices and good scores all help to contribute to the girls synchro team placing well in conference and hopefully state according to Breyak.

“We have a really good chance to be conference champs in general and we’ve never lost the section meet,” Gust said.

The season officially started on March 2 with four captains practices already done and many more practices ahead.