Women’s swimming victory against Granite Bay

By Rana Eser,

Anxious swimmers stood behind the blocks, towels hung over their shoulders, and goggles on their foreheads. They circled their arms, kicked their legs, bounced up and down, waiting to hear their cue.

“Varsity women 400 freestyle relay,” a voice sounded. All shaking and bouncing stoped as the women stepped up onto the blocks.

“Take your marks…” The swimmers grab the end of the block a second of silence and then a loud “BEEEP” pierced the air. Moments later they were in the water, slicing through like torpedoes with propellers as feet.

The dual Meet against Granite Bay on March 20 ended with a bang for the women when Senior Rachel Johnson out-touched her competitor, winning the 400 free relay and finishing off the meet. DHS defeated the Grizzlies  96-76.

Some of the more important races in the meet are the relay races. “Relays are a really big deal, because they’re worth double the points, and also are just fun because of the team aspect.” Van Deynze said. Normally getting first in the heat would win the team six points, but in relays, 12 points would be awarded.

DHS ended the meet with an impressive win in a relay. “Rachel Johnson anchored a relay there at 53.06 which is pretty awesome,” Coach Wright said. The team still has many weeks to train before sectionals, but they’re headed in the right direction.

Granite Bay came in third place at sectionals last year, just after the Blue Devils, who came in second. According to junior Katie Van Deynze, they were one of the teams to beat. “Well, [Granite Bay] was one of the competitive teams in sections last years, and we were down a couple of players today so it should be a pretty close meet point-wise,” Van Deynze said.

At about halfway through the season, the meet makes for a pretty good checkpoint for the swimmers.

According to van Deynze “We’re all well trained and tired by now, and it’s interesting to see how we’re doing at this point,”

According to women’s swim coach Dough Wright  it looks like the team is doing well. “We did awesome. We swam really well; Granite Bay is a really good team, one of the top teams in the section. We’re missing right now five of our best swimmers, but we had a lot of girls step up today and swim fast.”