As synchro captain and senior Lily Kulevsky looks forward to her fifth year on the team, she is excited to begin putting together their routines.

“I’m excited because I really like the team and I like hanging out with them. Even though it can be stressful, I still get excited for it,” Kulevsky said. “I’m looking forward to writing the routines and the creative aspect, because that’s the funnest part for me.”

According to assistant coach Jessica Gust, to decide captains, interested team members fill out an application and then the team votes.

“This year we only had two seniors, so we just went with those two because we need two captains anyways,” Gust said. “We just saved ourselves some paperwork and everybody some time and just went with those two.”

According to synchro captain and senior Hope Cassman, the captains arrange big sister and little sister pairings among other things.

“We have to assign younger swimmers to older swimmers to make synchro sisters, and we have to have questionnaires for them to fill out and then we have to plan out all of the dress codes and sister gifts for each meet,” Cassman said. “We’re also in charge of doing the apparel and the captains practices before the season started.”

Gust said during the first week of practice the team practices all together and the main focus is on helping the new girls become oriented to the team.

“The first week we take some team bonding time and do some basic skills stuff and kind of assess where people are at especially the brand new girls, and we have eight or seven brand new girls to the team, which is awesome,” Gust said.

According to Kulevsky, the beginning practices are focused on directing the team toward the competition season after months of offseason.

“(The first week of practice) has been fine. We mostly just work out because that’s all that we do for the first two weeks,” Kulevsky said. “It’s kind of boring but we need to get in shape. It’s still fun to get together with the team after months of not having practice.”

Kulevsky said the biggest challenge the team faces is the change in practice location because of locker room construction at Park.

“There’s going to be a lot that’s different because of the construction that’s going on in the locker rooms, so the high schoolers are going to have to go to the middle school for practice and the middle schoolers are going to have to practice at Central, which is kind of crazy,” Kulevsky said.

On top of construction occuring at Park, according to Gust, construction at the University of Minnesota pool that normally hosts the State meet will change the State meet location.

“Literally everything about the season is different, every single thing, totally not by our choice. The State meet pool at the University of Minnesota that we usually use is also under construction this year, so the State meet will be in Rochester, which because of that changed Sections, so the Section meet format is different,” Gust said. “I really don’t think it’s going to affect performance or any of those things, it’s just different logistics than we’re used to, so it just requires a little bit of adjustment.”

Cassman said the team hopes to build on its past success and continue to achieve success in the Section and State competitions.

“We’re hoping to keep our place at Sections and win all of our meets and win Sections,” Cassman said. “It’s always a goal for us to move up at State and place third again, because we’ve been in fourth place for the last few years. This year we have a lot of new swimmers, so hopefully that will help us gain more points.”