Liam is a Senior graduating in 2025, he competes in Swimming and Track. It is a fact that Boys Swimming is a severely underrated and over looked sport at Mehlville, and Liam happens to be the best current boys swimmer. He has been swimming since he was 8 but didn’t swim competitively until sophomore year of high school. Since only 3 team members, he has to work hard to pick up a lot of the slack due to the lack of swimmers. Yes that’s right, since there is only 3 boys on the team they cannot compete in any relays so every point is even more crucial. He competes in the 50m Free-style primarily and sometimes the 100m breaststroke or Individual medley. When asked why he sticks to swim he said “I like being able to move fast.” He plans to swim in college . Liam’s improvement has been good he’s dropped from a 26.5 to a recent pr of 24.9 in his main event.
An average swim practice includes a 2-3 miles of swimming total and then a lot of precision work on turns and starts, they practice 5 times a week. There are several different types of meets, Liam’s favorite is conference/end of the year meets , where, “There are actually fast people and I get pushed.” But, they also compete in duels against 1 other school, tris against 2 other schools quads against 3 other schools, and opens which can have an unlimited amount of teams. They have anywhere from 1 to 3 meets every week, an average week has 2 meets.
During Liam’s first year there were 10-12 swimmers and now there’s only 3. He said “Its just sad to see” about the decline of swimming since he started. He also said, “What team?” when asked about the team atmosphere There are a lot of difference this year like: the construction on the pool not allowing the team to practice at Mehlville, the fact that they cannot participate in relays, and he takes practices much more seriously now. Either way, Liam pushes on and hopes to qualify for state.
