The result of the boys’ swim meet against Wayzata came down to the final event and according to sophomore Miles Nordling, amid the cheers and energy in the pool, Park’s relay team beat Wayzata to win the meet. 

“The relays were super fun to watch, especially the 200 medley relay, where we got to see our own record beat by our medley team, which is always super fun to watch,” Nordling said. “The 400 free relay is always fun to watch because it’s at the end of the meet and it ended up coming down to that relay to win the meet.”

Head coach Amanda Forsberg said the final relay was the most exciting event of the night. In which senior captain Hayden Zheng brought home the win. 

“It was really high energy, obviously  it would have been more fun if there had been fans there, but I know a lot of people were watching online so I was getting a lot of texts,” Forsberg said. “Both Hayden (Zheng) and their breaststroker both anchored the 400 free relay so they both had the same amount of rest. He went into it a little behind but by the 50, he had already caught up to him.”

Senior captain Ben St. Clair said he was looking forward to getting to swim against Wayzata for the first time and the possibility of beating them.

“It was really exciting to win, because in my five years on the team, we’ve never had a chance to compete with let alone beat a team as good as Wayzata,” St. Clair said.

According to Forsberg, the team went into the meet ready to put in its best effort which helped them win.

“It felt really good, they’re a really strong team and they had phenomenal swims, but ours were just better. Everyone was getting personal bests and I can’t remember the last time we beat Wayzata,” Forsberg said. “Wayzata wore their tech suits and I told the captains that. I think that angered them and fired them up which is why we had some of our best swims of the season.”

St. Clair said his teammates’ effort in practice had paid off at meets and he hopes everyone will continue to drop time with the season ending soon. 

“Time wise, everyone’s improved a ton just due to working hard. We’ve been working super hard and that’s paid off,” St. Clair said. “The whole team’s just looking forward to Sections and State and tapering to try to put up the best times that we can.”

According to Forsberg, the team has not let the late start to the season stop it from swimming its best and they’ve been working hard in practice to make sure they are fully prepared for Sections.

“For some swimmers, the added time off actually helped them recover because we started the season later. But we’ve been doing a lot of extra sprinting and just trying to slowly build them back up and then we’ll get ready for Sections,” Forsberg said. “It’s honestly one of the better seasons a lot of them have had because we still have kids getting personal bests, which is crazy at this time of the year.”