girls swim season is going strong

There's a sure thrill of excitement at every swim meet, watching the swimmers standing on their blocks, flying through the air to then splash straight into the water and push themselves to outswim their competitors. Our Grand Junction swim team is incredible, and proved their skills at their last meet in Summit, Colorado. The girls woke up at 4am on Saturday morning to go compete against other swimmers. Our combined team of Palisade, Grand Junction, and Central High Schools had one of their best meets, with 31/41 girls on the team having some of their personal best times.

Emily Hardin, a freshman at Palisade, has been swimming her first season at Palisade this winter. She has quite the history with the sport, swimming at her friends house and doing lessons when she was younger. When she was 8 years old, she decided to swim for the Mavs competitive season, but was usually a little nervous at meets. However, this season she has been unstoppable. Hardin is often caught swimming the 400 free relay, 200 free relay, the 100 free, 50 free, and 100 backstroke. “My season with the Grand Junction team has been pretty good. At the beginning it was a little rough because I’m a little rusty because I haven't swam in so long so it was a little hard to start up again. Because the teams are combined there's a larger variety of girls and it's a lot easier to meet new people and make connections. As the season goes on, my favorite thing has been the feeling I get after swimming my event because for swimming it takes a lot of mental toughness and managing that stress and anxiety can be kind of hard. Once you put everything out in the pool and get done with your race it's such a good feeling. I always feel very accomplished.” Hardin explained. The conditions this past meet were pretty hard on the girls, but this was not stopping our persistent Dogs. Hardin states, “This last meet, the lows were everyone had a hard time adjusting to the altitude and early morning. It was really cold, like it was four degrees as we got out of the bus. The highs were that everyone worked super hard throughout those difficulties. So many girls on the team had some of their personal best times.”

Good luck to our Bulldogs for the rest of our season, and remember to cheer them on for their next meet on Saturday in Glenwood. Go Bulldogs!