The Lynx headed into the state meet with a winning record.  Both boys and girls teams had been undefeated in the regular season, crushing the competition time after time.

The boys were able to win another consecutive region’s championship along with the girls.  State being held in Juneau this year brought about different and new challenges for the athletes.

State has been held at Bartlett year after year, but with the construction of the new aquatic center in our state capital, Juneau, there was no reason not to have the meet there.

The new center included a brand new eight-lane pool, with an included warm down area, a splash zone and numerous water slides.

As the athletes entered this mysterious new building to a majority of them, mouths just dropped as many of them had never seen anything quite like the new facility.

This was all new and exciting to everyone, but there were definitely a few downfalls to having the meet hosted in Juneau, including the travel time, the cost of the trip, deck space and pool space.

Dimond Junior, Megan Hawkins, talked about the pros and cons of traveling to Juneau.

She said, “Yeah I really liked it.  It was a fun and new experience because State is always held in Anchorage.  The only thing that was bad was there was not enough deck space for all the athletes and coaches that attended.  The trip was great, though, because it brought the team a lot closer.”

Coach Scott O’brien, head of the Dimond swim team, also mentioned his thoughts about the venue change for the meet.

“ The trip itself was great,” he said, “but the cost is a great issue.  A majority of the qualifying teams had to fly and that’s not cheap.  The cost may affect swimming in Anchorage.”

Besides the fact that a majority of Dimond swimmers had never competed in this pool, they still performed their best.  The boys were able to win their fifth championship in a row (many boys on the team call it a 5-Peat), and the girls did just as well, being beaten overall by Juneau by only a few points.

Senior, Tommy Monoghan,  said, “It feels really good to win a state championship.  We worked hard all season and finally all the hard work paid off. “

Monoghan has also been on the team for all three previous state wins for the boys, but winning his senior year really takes the cake for them all.

Junior Michael Summers, one of the boys top elite swimmers and new 500-freestyle record holder, also had a few words to say regarding the win this year and his own personal goals for the season.

“As a team there was a lot less skipping practice,  and in general the boys team was more involved.  For myself my goals were to break the 500- freestyle record and win my events at state.  I did this by training more rigorously than I ever had before.  The coaches also never gave up on me and never gave up on the team.”

Summers did, in fact, break the 500-freestyle record with the time of 4:35.30 and won both his events.

Both the boys and girls of the Dimond swim team performed at state, and swam some of the best times the team has seen in years.