The Roxbury High School Swim team, a high school sport full of teamwork and personal bests, has been performing its best since the very beginning. Although the RHS swim team has had many obstacles in the past, the team has learned to overcome them, and continues to thrive beyond them.
There have been many obstacles these swimmers have faced in the past. For example, the COVID-19 Pandemic set these swimmers back tremendously. “We couldn’t have any team bonding, and no one could really be together and hang out as a team.” Caitlyn Kramaritsch, Senior and Captain of RHS Swim Team states.
Another example of an obstacle these swimmers went through was when the swimming facility shut down, which left the swimmers with no place to practice. Gabe Farkas, Sophomore on the RHS swim team, shares insight on this event that took place last year, “It made it a lot harder for us to do the best that we could during our practices. Plus, we missed out on school since we had to leave early to swim at another facility.”
In recent years, however, the swim team has overcome these obstacles and has seen many successes. For example, in the past season the swim team has been seeing many wins. The girls and boys teams had a total of 6 and 8 wins for the 22-23 season, and 6 and 7 wins for the 21-22 season. The team has suffered with some losses, yet counteracted those losses with excellent wins. Clearly, the swim team has learned to overcome these obstacles by pushing through these swim meets and swimming their hardest.
Moving on to the 23-24 season, the swimmers have been doing very well. Mr. Gervasio, the Roxbury High School swim team coach, has been noticing the amazing successes of his swimmers. “I believe our swimmers have had a strong start to their season,” Coach Gervasio states, “There are a number of individual swimmers who have really embraced the opportunity as a positive and welcoming experience. Adversity is a wonderful thing to see in a young athlete.”
Even though the swim team has shown many efforts this season, there have been struggles with the amount of swimmers the team currently has. “We are a relatively inexperienced team with lower numbers than we have grown accustomed to as a program,” Coach Gervasio explains. Caitlyn Kramaritsch continues off of Gervasio’s explanation and shares how the swim team is still doing well even though they don’t have “the same numbers [that we had] in previous years.”
Despite the sudden drop of the number of swimmers on the team, Mr. Gervasio explains that “the team has responded well to this challenge and demonstrated they are capable of maybe even more than they thought.” Anna Anikiej, senior and captain of the swim team, continues and states that the team has been “resilient to work hard” even with the small number of swimmers.
The swim team has been showing off their amazing work this season. Each swimmer has been striving to become better swimmers and even get new best times. With the number of wins being 5 for boys and 2 for girls so far, the team is beginning to develop even more goals and fulfill many expectations.
Most of the swimmers on the team have goals they have set for themselves; goals that they hope to accomplish by the end of the season. For example, Anna Anikiej hopes to have the ability to swim the 100 Butterfly at the Counties swim meet, while Caitlyn Kramaritsch hopes to be able to swim at championships. Each swimmer has a goal that they are determined to finally achieve.
Even though swimmers have their personal goals that they strive to achieve, there are also goals that swimmers and coaches have created for the team. For example, Mr. Gervasios goal is to always make sure that the team is “working toward making states” as well as “achieving [their] goals in practice attendance, academic success and teammate accountability.” While Anna Anikiej’s goal is for the team to “grow closer together as a family.”
Overall, the Roxbury High School swim team has been showing great success in the past, the present, and hopefully the future. Despite the obstacles and hardships these swimmers have faced, the team has always learned to overcome them. They are definitely looking forward to the upcoming swim meets and achievements this team will be offering.
