Tonight’s swim-meet in Hutchinson, Kansas marks the final one in the first half of the team’s season.

So far, the team has finished seventh of eight teams in one meet, fourth of four in another, but second place in the other two, including Saturday’s meet at Wichita Southeast.

It was a meet the team entered without a couple of key swimmers, head coach Kaitlyn Paul said.

“I was very excited,” Paul said. “To be able to bring home a second place finish with being down two of our major point-scorers was very exciting.”

In the meet, the team was able to compete and even outscore some Wichita-based teams they didn’t last year.

Still, Paul said is running on fumes a little bit right now. Today will be the fifth meet in two weeks for the team.

“It been tough and I think there has been some of that mental exhaustion, but also a lot of physical exhaustion,” Paul said.

Today’s meet in Hutchinson is one Paul said she is looking forward to because sometimes the team outscores Hutchinson, but sometimes they don’t, so seeing how the teams relate will be interesting.

Though it’s good the team has built some momentum with some strong results, Paul said it’s important the team keeps working over the break because nearby schools are working to catch up.

“I think it’s important for us to realize that Liberal and Garden City are both starting first-year programs,” Paul said. “I think it’s important for us to keep in mind that yes, we’ve been doing very well against Garden City and Liberal so far, but after winter break that could change.”

hutch 12-12-17 full results

Newton Invitational 11-30-17 Results

Parents of DCHS swimmers got a chance to see the team in action on Tuesday.

By Timothy Everson

The Dodge City High School swim team got their chance to show their stuff to a home crowd as they hosted the Red and Blue swim meet on Tuesday.

The intersquad meet consisted of 10 events and allowed for parents and family of swimmers to see them in action since the team did not have a home meet this season.

“It’s a great opportunity for the kids to show off to their parents,” head coach Kaitlyn Paul said. “We end up traveling a long ways for our meets. Garden City is the closest place that we go and everywhere else is far away so it’s really nice to have that opportunity for parents to come see their kids swim.”

The meet also took time to honor the team’s seven seniors who will be graduating in May. The seniors consist of Grace Harvey, Hannah Sowers, Gabby Mendoza, Abigail A. Ortiz, Ali Phelps, Valeria Lara and Alicia Trejo.

This season is Paul’s first so this year has been her only opportunity interact with the outgoing senior but she understands the void that will be left when they graduate.

“I’ve got to know the girls in the short time I’ve been here and they’re wonderful,” “They’re leaders, they’re here to help each other and out we’ll have some very talented girls who are getting ready to leave us so it’s going to be put on those underclassmen to recruit this year to get us where we want to be in the years following.”

Even though the meet didn’t count for anything, the competitive spirit was still high at the Dodge City YMCA and teammates yelled and screamed for each other throughout the entire meet.

Even though the team is fairly small, they’ve done rather well so far this season, qualifying more than a few times this year for the state tournament, working their way to hopefully qualify as a team.

“I’m really proud of how the girls have done so far,” “We have several things that have already qualified for state, we have consideration times for things that are getting ready to qualify for state. The girls had a fairly large team last year and between seniors and people graduating early, it was a much smaller team this year but even with that they’ve still been able to compete with other teams and taking as many points as possible. It’s really exciting.”

The Lady Demons will head north to Salina on Friday to compete at Salina South High School.