by Kaelyn Sayles

To kick off the Seattle Summer Swim League (SSSL) season, Gregory Seahurst hosted Arbor Heights in a 72-event dual meet on Tuesday.

Arbor Heights beat Gregory Seahurst 459.5 to 271.5, but both teams looked like they were having fun at their first meet of the season.

After the meet, Gregory Seahurst head coach Mike Fosberg was overheard telling one of his young swimmers, “it looks like we got second…better than third.”

Even the Seattle weather decided to play along as the sun broke through for the duration of the meet.

Both teams compete in the southern division of the SSSL, and the friendly rivalry brought family and friends in support of their favorite swimmers. As a special surprise to the Gregory Seahurst community, former Gators head coach Melissa Low showed up to cheer on the team.

The meet may have lasted a little over three hours, but the cheering never ceased. Supporters of both teams stayed until the end, giving the participants their full attention while the swimmers kept up their own energy and enthusiasm.

Coaches on both sides cheered loudly as well, encouraging the kids to swim fast and compete with not only the other swimmers, but also their own personal times.

Prior to the meet, the Gators entered the pool area clapping and chanting “we are Gregory.” Fosberg told his team to always swim long and relaxed, and to race the people next to them.

But this didn’t mean there weren’t any pre-meet jitters.

“It’s exciting to have that first meet of the year and there are a lot of unknowns, especially for me since this is my first year,” Fosberg said. “When you get to a real, actual meet, things happen and there’s always a little bit of uncertainty.”
Arbor Heights head coach Kyle Homad would agree with Fosberg.

Although after the meet Homad said he was happy and that the team swam really well, he did also say that before the meet he was “anxious because we haven’t seen the kids swim as much as we want, so it’s good to get the first swims out of the way.”

Before the races began, Homad gave his team a goal.

“I told them to drop some time or win the races,” Homad said. “I told them about the little ducky toys that they could win - they got excited about that - so we had kind of a score total we wanted to reach.”

Seems like the ducky toy incentive worked.

Although Gregory Seahurst lost overall, Fosberg didn’t sound at all discouraged. In fact, he said that the under-10 boys surprised him because of their ability to swim a longer distance well, even though most of them are only nine years old.
“I’d say that our strength is in our younger age groups,” Fosberg said.

It may have been the first dual meet of the season, but already, the coaches are looking forward to, and making goals for, the championship season.

Homad wants to see the kids continue to drop times and improve. Fosberg already knows most of his kids have the talent needed to succeed this season.
With the first meet completed, both coaches said they want to get as many kids to qualify for the preliminaries as possible.

It won’t be long until they find out just how many of those kids will make it. Until then, in the words of Dory from Disney Pixar’s “Finding Nemo,” they’ll “just keep swimming.”