Boys’ Swim Wins Conference
February 7, 2023
The Neenah Rockets Boys’ Swim team took 1st place at the Fox Valley Association’s Conference Championship this past Saturday, with 623 points overall. The meet was held at the Fond du Lac Community Aquatic Center and featured the Conference’s 5 teams. Neenah’s swimmers were split between 24 events, with half reserved for varsity and the other half for junior varsity. Each event contains one or more heats; each successive heat features faster swimmers. Lasting over five hours, the cumulative event tired many swimmers on the team. Yet even during the day’s last events, many team members still stood at the pool’s edges, relentlessly cheering on their teammates.
“I think that the PRs that I got were really important, especially during the 100 Fly. I thought that Coach Raeth was really supportive, and the practice that we did definitely paid off in the end.” – Rylan Mendoza, sophomore
This meet marks the end of the season for the “JV squad” encompassing most of the team, with future events only enlisting the top 12 members, 9 swimmers and 3 divers. Their next competition is the WIAA Sectional Meet, occurring this Saturday at the NHS Natatorium, at 12 p.m. Diving events will be held the night before at 5:30 p.m. Divers also saw success at the meet, with captain Ryan Foucault, a senior, earning a new personal record of 415.35 points.
Last year’s swim team took the 1st place title during its sectional meet, the first time it had done so since 2016. This year, the team is statistically tracking similarly to last, with a perfect 5-0 FVA Dual Meet record along with this past weekend’s conference championship.
Braden Louden, a junior on the varsity team, answered some questions about these recent events as well as the future of the team.
Q: How do you evaluate your teammates’ performance at this meet?
A: I think the team did really well. It was an easy sweep, and we destroyed the conference. I’m just really proud of what this team has accomplished this season.
Q: What are your thoughts on next week’s sectional events?
A: That should be a lot of fun. We’ve got some good competition, like Bay Port. We’re going to work hard to beat them.
Q: How much difficulty do you see in this task?
A: It’s a big challenge. It’s gonna be really close. Hopefully, we can beat them but we’ll have to see.
Q: How is the team preparing for this?
A: The week before, you have a taper week. So this week, we’re going to go easier at practice — so our muscles are recovered. So, last week, we were working hard, but this week we relax our muscles so we can swim faster.
