After a close loss to Hopkins in its first meet of the season, Park boys’ swimming is nevertheless on track for a successful season, according to coach Amanda Forsberg.

“I’m really happy with a lot of times, we have a lot of new guys a lot of young guys. A lot of the kids are coming in where they left off last year, which normally doesn’t happen in swimming,” Forsberg said.

In the longer distance events, such as the 200-yard freestyle and the 500-yard freestyle events, Park swimmers earned first place, and according to sophomore Milo Bunting, this was a result of hard work in practices.

“Our practices are rigorous, to say the least,” Bunting said. “So I think if we didn’t practice as much as we did, we wouldn’t have gotten the times we had today.” 

Senior captain Will Mathews said how well the swimmers perform at meets is based off of how much work is put in at practice.

“How (swimmers) do in a meet is incredibly dependent on how you’ve been pushing yourself during practice,” Mathews said. “I know from personal experience if you miss two or three practices, your performance is affected dramatically.”

Forsberg said prior to the meet at Hopkins, she specifically worked on endurance in practice, which allowed swimmers to be successful in the long distance events.

“We had practices focusing on them holding pace and trying to get some endurance,” Forsberg said.

As for future meets, Mathews said he wants to work on the atmosphere of the swim deck to cheer on his fellow swimmers, especially after facing a loud Hopkins team.

“Deck energy can be something that we need to get (better at),” Mathews said. “I know Hopkins has some really crazy, wild, serious (cheers).”

The next meet for boys’ swimming will be against Benilde St. Margaret’s 6 p.m. Dec. 19 at St. Louis Park Middle School.