Breathe in, breathe out, senior Hannah Musser focuses her mind as she prepares to dive into the water and hopefully break a school record.  After a third place finish at state last year, the BVNW girls swim team is gearing up for another winning season and Musser said she is ready for the challenge.

“I think we had a really good season last year and so it’s going to be kind of hard to top that,” Musser said. “But we’ve also gotten some new people so we might meet up to last year’s team standards  but we all around still have a pretty strong team so hopefully maybe we’ll [do well].”

Tryouts for this year’s team took place during the week of March 3^rd, and training started soon after.  The girl’s swam in their first meet this morning and took first place as they hosted the annual Greg House Invitational. Head coach Kyle Farrington said the team is looking promising this year but they still have work to do.

“The girls’ team is pretty solid,” Farrington said. “They’ve been really excited and working really hard and so far they’ve been pretty fast. I’m really excited to see what they can do once we get into competition period of our season.”

The team is looking slightly different this year, with the loss of several graduating members and others who chose to swim club instead. But Farrington said the girls aren’t the only things that are different, they are trying a new type of training. Musser said there has been a lot of research that supports this new program and she is looking forward to trying it.

“Last year we did a lot of yard based type training, a lot of endurance work,” Musser said. “This year he’s focusing more on sprinting at your pace to get that gold time. It’s more like heavy sprinting and explosive type work instead of just pounding out the yards and quality versus garbage yardage.”

Musser said this new technique is being used in many club and college settings. The goal of the technique is to allow the swimmers to perform at their best all season instead of only achieving their best during championships.

“It’s a lot more consistent and it’s been working with a lot more swimmers,” Musser said. “There’s good science behind it so people are just starting to make this turn.”

Farrington said he hopes the new training technique, will lead the girls to another successful year. Despite the potential this style holds he said it was a bit of a risk to switch the program.

“It was kind of scary to try something new with a girls’ team that’s this talented,” Farrington said. “I guess I thought with the mix of girls we have this year that it would work out really well.”

Musser said she was very excited for the year and the possibilities that the team brings. Farrington agreed, he said he is looking to defend the EKL title and be in the running for another trophy. Overall, the team is ready to dive in to a new year and season.

“Im looking forward to it, I’d really like to go out with a bang,” Musser said. “It’s going to be awesome, I mean being on a team it’s always so much fun and your senior year you just kind of have that extra emotion in you.”