On Nov. 7 and 8, 2024, Powell girls’ swimming team competed for state. With the loss of a coach, the girls persevered to do the best of their abilities. 

Girls swimming coach Mr. Bob Smartt reflected on the hard times they faced.

“In my eight years of coaching the girls swim team at Powell, this has been the most challenging year,” Coach Smartt said. “Unfortunately, we lost Coach Bailey Jackson early in the season when she slipped on a wet deck at the Riverton High School pool and shattered her patella. The team greatly missed Coach Bailey the remainder of the season.”

This injury was not the only one noted throughout this year. Junior Patricia Christensen and senior Kate Miller both faced impairment this season.

“I was medically pulled for three weeks halfway through the season, and that was very difficult,” Christensen said. “Both watching my friends compete and grow, and trying to get back into shape within the two weeks I had before Conference.”

Miller also faced complications during this year.

“I got my fourth concussion, and that set me back for four weeks out of the water,” Miller said. “Then before that, I was going to physical therapy for about five times a week to be able to get my shoulder and knee issues figured out because every stroke, my shoulder was trying to pop out of the socket, and with every kick, my knee was trying to dislocate, so I was going to a lot of physical therapy, and I was doing a lot through practice to try to get those better so that it wouldn’t hurt as much for State.”

Christensen has made the state team every year since she started freshman year. Being there through it all, she has observed a change from past competitions.

“We did not do as well as we did last year [as a team], but we did very well with the small amount of girls we had competing,” Christensen said. “I placed well. Third in the 200 freestyle and fifth in the 100 backstroke.”

With most girl swimmers being seniors last year, a drop in the number of teammates was noticeable.

“It’s definitely different this year with our team,” junior Kaitlin Diver said. “We didn’t have as big as a state team as we have in the past… that’s definitely a lot harder. And I’m an upperclassman now, so I do have to lead our team a little bit more and help out. Practice has been different, and just the whole atmosphere of practices can be different.”

Diver placed third in the 500 freestyle, making her an All-State swimmer alongside Christensen.

Mr. Smartt plans to implement different training styles for next year’s events.

“Next year, we will have a number of new changes,” Mr. Smartt said. “We will have more athletes swimming the challenging aerobic sets that worked well this year for Kaitlin and Patricia. We will be doing more dryland training aimed at core strength and at shoulder stability. We had a [lack] of breaststroke swimmers this year and we will address that deficit by swimming more breaststroke in practice.”