Despite their tough loss against Chaska, assistant coach Branch Johnson said fast times from the team at the start of the season will set the team up for success in their upcoming meet against Bloomington Kennedy and future meets.

“I think we’re seeing a lot of positive results so far—so early in the season—and we are just going to go down the path that we’ve set out,” Johnson said.

Freshman Andre Barajas said he is excited to see the results of the upcoming meet against Kennedy after noticing the effort the team has been putting in at practices.

“I’m looking forward to swimming the medley relay and 200 IM and seeing how our work has paid off,” Barajas said.

Barajas said they are hoping to defeat Kennedy again, as they have in past seasons.

“We beat them(in previous years), so I’m hoping to have that trend continue,” Barajas said.

According to Johnson, leadership from the upperclassmen is inspiring the younger swimmers to improve.

“We have a lot of older talent on the team—a lot of leadership—a lot of guys who’ve been around and have a strong work ethic and that trickles down to the younger guys,” Johnson said

According to Johnson, the team has created a special plan at practices by observing their strengths and weaknesses from past meets.

“We just keep doing what we’re doing,” Johnson said. “We have a best fitted prime training plan—we gather what works and what doesn’t work from our swim meets.”

Barajas said in order to prepare for Kennedy, the team is increasing the length of their sets and improving on what they have done poorly in previous meets.

“(We are) doing longer sets and working on stuff that we have done badly in previous meets like turns and starting,” Barajas said.  

The meet will take place at 5 p.m. Jan. 3 at the St. Louis Park High School.