What a new home to practice in means for Freeport swimming program
Freeport swimming has not had a pool to call home for a while.
In the past, the Yellowjackets, whose girls team tied for a section championship last year, have sparingly had the chance to get together outside of meets. Freeport’s swimmers normally prepared for high school competition with their club or YMCA teams.
“What would happen (was) our time together would be when we came to the meets,” second-year ’Jackets head coach Sheryl Schrecongost said. “We would use whatever pool time we had during our warm-ups. That was our chance to work on relays. That was our chance to kind of fix a little bit of whatever we could that needed to be fixed.”
And that was after what could sometimes be an awkward ride.
“When you first get on the bus after not having a practice together and you’re heading to a meet, you almost feel like the Bad News Bears,” Schrecongost said.
“You don’t know how certain people perform at meets,” said Kira Schrecongost, a senior swimmer and Sheryl’s daughter. “Only getting to see half the kids swim once or twice a week for three months ... you don’t know how to interact with people. You do see them in school, but it’s different when you practice with them. That’s when you bond with people.”
Now the ’Jackets have the chance to.
Thanks to the help of Highlands High School, Freeport’s swimmers are able to hop in the water there as a collective on a regular basis.
“The kids are happy to be together,” the elder Schrecongost said. “Especially when they’re there, it’s just like, ‘Wow, we are actually a team.’ … I think (there are) only good things to come.”
“It’s a different environment that I’m honestly having a lot of fun with this year,” the younger Schrecongost said.
Sheryl Schrecongost also coaches as an assistant with the Fox Chapel Killer Whales club team. She got the team some practices in Fox Chapel’s pool a few times in the past, which she said was, “better than nothing. We had nothing.”
Freeport’s swim team is designated as a club and is not sponsored by the school. Coaches are volunteers. The team pays for its own travel through fundraising. Pool rentals can get to be expensive, so Sheryl Schrecongost reached out to Highlands.
The practice time will be instrumental in fine tuning things, most notably relay exchanges.
“Relays change all the time, obviously depending on how fast you are,” Sheryl Schrecongost said. “Those are things that we can work on together.”
With the attitude the team has taken on over the past few years, the pool time should be an added bonus.
“We don’t have the numbers that some of these other schools have,” Sheryl Schrecongost said. “If they’re goal-driven, to me that’s a success. … A lot of these kids have stuck with Freeport even though we haven’t had pool time together and have had the successes that we’ve had. It just goes to show that you don’t have to have all the amenities.”
