BY JON R. LaFOLLETTE | STAFF WRITER
The McAllen Memorial swim team will be without several swimmers today at the Brownsville Pre-regional Showcase swim meet. While the holidays signal the nearing of district competition, the season also brings the unwelcome side effect of the flu.
Coach Roxanne Balducci has preached precautionary measures to keep her swimmers out of the doctor’s office and in the pool, such as getting plenty of rest and drinking lots of water.
“But there’s not much you can do,” Balducci says of her ill team members. “It’s kind of hard to stay completely healthy in a school with one thousand kids.”
Though she won’t have some of her top swimmers, Balducci hopes to see continued improvement from a trio of underclassmen who will see an increased role: Kaden Garza and the sibling duo of Joshua and Joseph Velasquez.
“As the season has been progressing, their times are dropping and getting faster,” Balducci said. “The three of them are all-around good swimmers.”
Memorial will have more than two weeks of downtime after the Brownsville meet. Swimmers will have a mandatory five days off to enjoy the holiday and recover, but Balducci is weary of the lengthy gap between meets.
“Swimming isn’t like other sports,” she said. “If you take two or three days off, it’s like starting from scratch. The effort has to be there on a daily basis.”
SHARYLAND SEVEN
Sharyland High’s girls swim team is measly in numbers. The Lady Rattlers have only seven swimmers on the roster compared to 40 boys.
“If someone sat in on one of our practices they’d think we were an all-boys program,” coach Tina Jensen said.
Despite their seemingly meager make up, Sharyland’s girls have consistently out-performed their own expectations.
“I’ve been super impressed,” Jensen said. “Every meet we go to, the girls come in third. Even at meets with (Class) 6A schools, we always out-swim them. My girls are beating out teams that have 25 kids on them. I can’t complain about their performance.
The Lady Rattlers will look to continue their strong performance in the pool today at the Class 5A Holiday Hustle pre-regional meet at the PSJA Natatorium.
“Most of my girls are sophomores, so they’ll keep building and getting better,” Jensen said. “Needless to say, they’re a real close group. They don’t have much choice.”
Though determined, Sharyland’s diminutive size has at times been a hindrance. Swimmers are allowed to compete in just two events per meet and the Lady Rattlers don’t always have the numbers to swim in every event. The relays have been an added challenge as well.
“We’re working (the relays) a little bit harder,” Jensen said. “And the girls do the best they can at that time. It gives them another opportunity to see how good they are or see how much more motivation they need.”
REST VS. RUST
While many Valley swim teams will compete in Brownsville and Pharr this weekend, Edinburg High will be staying home, a conscious decision by coach Oscar Garza.
“I purposefully did this so we could focus on the little things that need to get improved,” Garza said. “We can reevaluate our goals and see who needs to get better and what we need to accomplish.”
The next meet for the Cougars won’t come until Jan. 9 in Galveston. By then, the team will have had 34 days between competitions. Garza says he isn’t concerned about the lengthy break, but he is cognizant of the balance between having a rested team and a rusted one.
“I’m not going to allow my kids to regress,” Garza said. “But we don’t want to over do things that, in the long term, will hurt our swimmers. We have to be very diligent with what we assign the kids to do and not overwhelm them.”