If asked how someone felt about the swim team at Quakertown High School, the response would most likely go something like, “we have a swim team?”

This season though, 2019-2020, has changed that question in this school.

When asked how head coach Anthony Carty felt about this season, he stated, “we set goals at the beginning of the season. We didn’t quite achieve those goals, but along the way we achieved all kinds of other goals that I never even dreamed of.”

One of the senior captains stated that she feels “over the past four years, each year we become more like a family and this year was finally when everyone was close and felt a part of the team no matter their speed.”

The team has changed drastically and the entirety of the team feels those impacts.

As shown by sophomore Lizzie Susavage, people want to involve themselves in the team, seen through when asking how she felt before her first race after recovering from ACL surgery, she said, “I was so happy, I cried.”

Carty says the credit for the progress of the team directly stems from “the group of seniors that have saw this program the whole way through and now they’ve gotten to their last year” and successes have followed.

The measure of progress can not stem from the team records, rather the culture of the team tells it all.
Not only does the team recruit new swimmers in the district, but also program kids from the surrounding area who desire to compete on a strong team such as the swim team at Quakertown.

With the ability to have an influx of swimmers, whether small or large of an influx, the culture of the team remains the same.

The team has also just completed their championship meets which seemed extremely successful for the swimmers. Carty states, “clearly it was one of the best championship weekends I have been a part of.”

The weekend seemed successful for most of the athletes and for some, their best meet yet. Emma Schwartz, a senior at Quakertown, states that she feels “champs went amazing for both boys and girls with the amount of personal records we had.”

During the championship weekend, the team had many best times and many district qualifiers.
Many records ended up broken this season including Tyler Einolf breaking the 100 yard breastroke and the 50 and 100 yard freestyle records, Caleb Einolf breaking the 500 yard freestyle record and the Boys 200 Yard Medley Relay record consisting of Tyler Einolf, Caleb Einolf, Ben Stella and David Pyfer.

Compared to years past, only sending one or two swimmers to the meet, Carty states that they have the ability to send a large amount of swimmers to districts, showing the improvement and advancement of the team’s talent.

Districts takes place at LaSalle University and consists of some of the fastest athletes in high schools around Quakertown.

Districts, an extremely competitive meet, seems to consistently appear as another successful place for swimmers to get best times and do well. When Tyler Einolf responded to how he felt about the district meet, he stated that “I am pretty excited and confident that I am going to do well and drop time and make it to states.”

Overall, Coach Carty says, “I think it’s been an incredibly successful season for everybody” and shows strong emotions of pride within his swimmers. For the future of the program, he states that, “the future of the team looks really well” and that “we have a great youth movement going on.”

A special good luck to the swimmers at districts, represent Quakertown well!