Warriors do well in home meets

Hosting two boys swimming meets last week, the Worland Warriors took another step forward in their progress this season.

"Our younger swimmers are starting to see what it takes," said WHS boys swimming and diving coach Justin Howe. "I got some guys that are practicing in the morning now. They're starting to see that being fast in USA and middle school is different from the high school level."

Hosting the Warrior Quad on Jan. 12 and the Warrior Invitational on Jan. 13, and each Warrior had something to be proud of from their swims last weekend.

As a younger team, technique has been a big focus for Worland. The time dedicated to that technique in practice is beginning to pay off, too.

Turns have been emphasized for the Warrior swimmers, and during Saturday's meet, the team improved in that area. Thomas Nelson was one of the many Warriors who showed the benefit of executing faster turns.

Nelson finished fifth in the 500-yard freestyle with a time of 6:55.61.

"Thomas is a new swimmer, he didn't have turns before. He swam the 500 this weekend and the kid he was racing, he beat him on turns. That kid would catch up during the swim part. They're catching on with underwaters, distance off the wall and turns are huge. We're making progress," said Howe.

Other Warriors who had standout performances include Donovan Warren, Neils Quigley and Joey Durrant.

"Donovan had a DQ on his breaststroke Friday. We worked on that right before the meet and had him swim it again, and he was fine. He cut time, too, which was good. Neils kind of held time this weekend, he didn't go super faster than he was before. But we're doing some different things this week. And he's swimming in the mornings, so we'll see. It could make him more tired, but it will pay off once we start the taper," said Howe. "Joey swam well, he's four seconds off of qualifying in the backstroke. We're kind of abandoning other strokes this week for Joey and try to get that qualifying time."

With multiple meets in a week and practices getting hard, this stretch of the season is among the hardest for the Worland swimmers. But the focus for them has to remain the same, they've got to make the most of each practice in order to hit their goals in competition.

"They just need to focus on getting better and practice. We've kind of moved up to swimming on times instead of me just giving you a rest interval. You got to make it by this time, and if you don't, you go back again. That pushes you even more. You still have to swim correctly. You can't go out there and mindlessly swim. You have to focus on one aspect or two to get better.

"That's just kind of my coaching style. I don't feel that we can go fast and not do it right. Do it right, and we'll keep building speed as the year goes on. We have some very good swimmers with their technique, like Scott, we just got to build the endurance up," said Howe.

The Warriors have two meets this week. On Thursday, they're in Cody for a Triangular. There, the Warriors will swim off-events. Then, on Saturday, they're in Lander for the Lander Invitational.

"We're going to swim some off-events Friday. I like that they want to try and were asking me to swim those off-events. Saturday is a huge meet in Lander, and we'll swim our faster events and see where we stack up pretty much against the state," said Howe.