“It feels like it’s the best way I could have ended out my swimming career in high school, especially when I wasn’t expecting it. I was pretty confident that I could move up in the ranks, because I didn’t feel like I used everything I had [in the preliminaries], even though that was my fastest time in the 200,” Barton said. “Feeling that I had more gave me a lot of confidence going into finals.”

Barton strayed away from his normal preparations for meets.

“I usually rest a couple of weeks before a big meet, but I only got 2 days of rest from hard training,” Barton said. “I like to think that it set me back that way I could do better in future meets, but it makes me wonder if I could have gone a lot faster if I got more rest.”

Barton explained being with his friends and teammates is what calms his nerves before each race.

“Keeping my nerves down is a really hard thing for me. What I have been doing recently is just trying to have a lot of fun with my friends and tell a lot of jokes. It loosens me up and makes me forget all the negative things about the race,” Barton said.

Being able to cheer for her teammates and be with people from rivaling teams was one of Francell’s favorite things from state.

“It was fun being at state, our friends and teammates came and cheered us on and I got to cheer them on,” Francell said. “ I didn’t expect to do so well at state, I have a friend on my club team who I was competing against and I always expect her to do better than me, but this time I did better than her which was fun.”

The meet brought promise to what to come ahead in the years coming up and the team is ready to train harder to get better rankings according to Kaderli.

“Next year I will continue to train hard, most likely harder plus more hours in the pool and in the weightroom,” Kaderli said.  The Maroons had a really great season this year. I am so proud of us and I can’t wait for next year.