Tina Tamm, in her 17th year as head coach of the swim team, is looking forward to getting her girls back in the pool after the summer break. A new school year and a new season always brings hope and anticipation when teams kick off their schedule of games and practices.
“Each new season brings new excitement,” Tamm said.
Kayla McCall will be coaching the divers and Joalah Boos is assistant coach for the swimmers. The team is young with just six seniors, who will be charged to take roles as leaders under Tamm, McCall and Boos.
Forty girls fill the varsity roster with 18 of those girls being seventh and eighth-graders.
“We have 13 incoming seventh graders this year,” said Tamm. “That is the most we've had in a long time.”
Last year, a star emerged in Emi Quill, a sophomore diver who finished 15th at state. Now in her junior year, Quill is learning to deal with the nerves and the spotlight and is expected to shine once again in 2017.
“Emi should be just as strong if not stronger than last season,” said Tamm. “She has been diving all summer, doing different diving camps and has improved her technique quite a bit.”
Tamm says because Quill had the opportunity to advance to state last season and see the competition level down there, she has come into the summer and pre-season driven and ready to do some big things.
“We are excited to see what the future holds with Emi,” she said.
Vanessa Gilles, Jalissa Johnson, Emily Lipinski, Melody Swanson, Celia Schmitz and Angelle Spaeth are the seniors the youngsters will be looking to for leadership. Sophomores Hailey Eriksson, Sophia Diaz, Alana Berger and Avery Tamm are excelling in the pool while freshmen Kyla Henkemeyer, Anna Pancoast, Madison Ratz, Piper Romfo, Sarah Schmidt, Morgan Schrader, Makenna Thelen and Monica Zimmerman hope to impress the coaches enough to get shots at competing against more-experienced swimmers.
Tamm has many other very good swimmers to choose from who will challenge the top girls all season for the prestigious varsity spots at meets.
Tamm says with the youth and the pre-season still on-going, she and the coaches have been focusing on one, most-important element of the sport.
Technique.
“The most important thing we can teach the young swimmers/divers is technique,” said Tamm. “If we get that ironed out right at the beginning of their first year, we can continue to improve upon it throughout the rest of their five seasons on the team.”
Tamm says mental toughness is also an important trait to emphasize with the young girls.
“They tend to focus on ‘what place did I get’ in the race and not on the time they swam it in,” she said. “They get disappointed in themselves when they don't win a race but forget to look at the fact that they dropped time off of their event. We focus on the clock — not the place.”
Tamm has the girls in the pool for 2-1/2 to three hours a day and will reduce the time to 2-1/2 hours once the season kicks off this week in Big Lake. Tamm hasn’t chosen captains for the team quite yet, but expects her seniors to be the natural leaders once the regular season gets into full swing.
At early practices this fall, Tamm and her coaching staff used a lot of the time to get the girls “at least a little bit back in to shape” before getting into the pool and racing the clock.
“The first week of practice is basically trying to get them back (into shape), “ Tamm says. “We work on the basics while also trying to get the yards back up so they can get the training in and also get the techniques back.”
Coaching swimming is fun for Tamm and her coaches but some things always need to be ironed-out before the season officially gets under way.
“The hardest part is putting together a line-up that will give us the win,” said Tamm. “I have to try and anticipate what the other coach is going to do. If I happen to guess right, it's a great outcome. If I guess wrong, it’s not so good.”
Tamm says her team is young but she has a lot of talent she hopes to see emerge as the season progresses.
“Our strong point is going to be the depth that we will have this year,” she said. “Many of the seventh graders coming in have a lot to offer this team.”
Quill, of course, will be the identity of this young team for 2017.
Tamm and McCall’s biggest goal year-in and year-out is to get as many girls qualified for sections as they possibly can.
“That is where they can compete and qualify for the state meet,” Tamm said. “I do like to win meets but in the grand scheme of things, I know there are meets that we won't win.”
As Aristotle once said, “Good habits formed at youth make all the difference.”
THE 2016-17 BECKER BULLDOG GIRLS SWIM AND DIVE TEAMS. (In no particular order): Alana Berger, Haiden Berrios, Nevaeh Bjorlin-Immerman, Kadence Cox, Sophia Diaz, Hailey Ericksson, Ava Ewald, Kamryn Gass, Vanessa Gilles, Kyla Henkemeyer, Kamerine Janssen, Jalissa Johnson, Cassie Kupczyk, Zoe Leiwen, Emily Lipinski, Avary Mauna, Chloe McDonald, Anna Pancoast, Lily Parga, Arleigh Pudlick, Emily Quill, Madison Ratz, Piper Romfo, Allison Sanderson, Tia Schaap, Sarah Schmidt, Celia Schmitz, Morgan Schrader, Danielle Smith, Angelle Spaeth, Sophie Studor, Nadine Super, Meghan Swanson, Melody Swanson, Avery Tamm, Makenna Thelen, Katelyn Uecker, Delaney Varney, Sarah Woelfel and Monica Zimmerman.
