According to head coach Amanda Forsberg, the team’s hard work over winter break has paid off in their meet against St. Paul Academy and Summit (SPAHA), where they won 54-40.

“We’ve had a lot of meets and a lot of practice especially coming off of winter break the team has been pretty tired,” Forsberg said. “But I think this definitely helped to see some good swims and see all the hard work pay off.”

Senior captain Adam Recknagel said this meet was a confidence booster and motivator for the tougher meets coming up in the near future.

“We had some very good times and we placed first in a lot of events. It’s important with this win we can build momentum to go against Chaska-Chan, who is our biggest competitor currently. We can improve on our kicking and our core strength,” Recknagel said.

Freshman Ben St. Clair said he felt energized by the victory, and felt the team’s pride was on the line.

“I feel the meet was pretty important because this is our house and we’ve got to defend it. I don’t think that we have ever lost to them here so we gotta keep that track record going,” St. Clair said. “We had some good cheering, I feel when I get cheered on I go faster so I want to see more of it. Coming out of the meet, I’m feeling good, it shows that we can beat pretty challenging teams.”

Sophomore William Matthews said the team enjoyed flexing their muscles before the next meet.

“I think that we did well just getting in the pool and swimming the best we could. We got a lot of firsts, seconds and thirds which helped us win the meet. We got really hyped to show what we could do before Chaska Chan,” Matthews said.

Forsberg said the meet felt especially satisfying after their earlier loss to the Trojans.

“We saw (SPAHA) at the maroon and gold at the U of M. They beat us, so it was nice to come back and beat them here on our own turf. Without diving, we’re on a little bit more of an even playing field,” Forsberg said. “We had some great times especially coming off a week with a lot of meets. This was probably the first meet we didn’t have any records broken.”

Forsberg said the team always has room for tweaks and improvement in the water.

“Just little things, we’re are a little slow in some of our relay starts, were still breathing in and out of some of the walls and into our finishes. There’s always little things to work on as the year progresses,” Forsberg said.

According to Forsberg, Park won the previous meet against Robbinsdale Cooper 85-74. Forsberg said swimmers had an opportunity to branch out to different events.

“(At Cooper) I had a lot of people swim off events, it was fun for our team to get some different times and give swimmers some of their regular events,” Forsberg said. “Benilde is on the horizon, and that’s always fun, it usually ends up being a really close one.”

Senior Alec Pittman said one advantage the team has is an exceptional cooperation and dynamic between underclassmen and upperclassmen swimmers.

“I’d say the team has some awesome cohesion between both young and old swimmers. One of our top swimmers is Hayden who is a freshman, and he is just godly fast. Then you have other swimmers that bring their own strengths,” Pittman said. “We have a great group of senior leaders and the younger swimmers feel comfortable enough to do their own thing and have their own work ethic and motivation in practice.”

The next meet is 6 p.m. Jan. 18 at St. Louis Park High School against Chaska-Chan.