Published 12:05 am Wednesday, July 22, 2015
LAPLACE — While the summer may be heating up, the swim season has already officially come to an end and the St. John swim teams fared well overall.
Leading the pack once again this season was the LARAYO Barracudas who, at 5-0 on the year, finished their 11 straight season without losing a meet.
LARAYO outpaced their opponents to win the River Parish Swim League invitational held at the La Vacherie Swimming Club and finished in first place in River Parish Swim League standings to end the season. The River Parish Swim League is made up of six teams from St. John the Baptist, St. James and St. Charles parishes, including St. John-based LARAYO and Riverlands.
LARAYO head coach Michelle Jensen said she was impressed with her team’s overall improvement throughout the season.
“The biggest thing is the improvement of all the swimmers, especially the younger ones,” Jensen said. “I guess I get the most satisfaction seeing children improve their strokes and improve their times as the season goes along. Many of the kids did their best times (in the invitational) so we were very satisfied.”
Leading the Barracudas was Emily Schexnayder, who broke the 11-12 year old girls 50m freestyle and 50m backstroke records. “That was a great thing,” Jensen said. “We also had a lot of high point winners. There was a lot of individual success there.”
High point leaders for LARAYO included Lily Weber in the 7-8 girls division, Owen Weber in the 9-10 boys division and Schexnayder in the 11-12 girls division.
The Riverlands Stingrays came in third in the River Parish Swim League invitational, but finished fourth in River Parish Swim League standings for the season with a 2-3 record.
Head coach Lindsey Eichhorn said she was pleased with her team’s invitational performance and overall progress throughout the season.
“Our 9-10 girls won both of their relays — that was awesome,” Eichhorn said. “We have really strong 9-10 girls. Our younger kids, a good third of our team is under eight years old, they’ve definitely progressed majorly from the beginning of the year until now.”
Eichhorn said while the La Vacherie Swimming Club pool presented some interesting difficulties for her team, she felt her swimmers handled it well.
“We practiced doing some different things because the La Vacherie pool is a meter pool, whereas ours is a yard pool,” Eichhorn said. “So we tweaked practices to help the kids not get too tired out swimming that extra length. It doesn’t seem like that big of a deal, but to little 7-year-olds it is a huge difference.” In the end, Eichhorn said Riverlands met their target for the season.
“It was a great year,” Eichhorn said. “The main goal at Riverlands is to have fun and do better than they did when they started and they definitely did that.”
Riverlands had one high points winner in Shae Waguespack in the 9-10 girls division.
Over at Belle Terre Country Club, the Piranhas swim team experienced their first season out of the River Parish Swim League.
Piranhas head coach Haley Montz and assistant coach Blaine Tatje led the squad to 3-3 in their first season as an independent.
Tatje said the team was excited to get the chance to face off against more diverse competition this year. “I’m very happy with how we did this summer,” Tatje said. “It was a new adventure for us as a team. Because we were no longer in the River Parish swim league we got the opportunity to swim against teams we had never swam against before — teams from New Orleans, different teams from Luling, Cypress Lakes in Destrehan.”
Tatje said he felt the competition they faced as an independent this year was tougher than in past years. “We really got to see what our team can stand up against, especially because we have kind of been in a bubble with the River Parishes league,” Tatje said. “It was really exciting to see how great we did against those teams. We lost three meets and won three meets. But the three meets we lost were by such a close margin that it gives us a lot of hope by next summer that we’re probably going to do even better.” Tatje said while the whole team improved throughout the year, he pointed out one group in particular that gives him hope for future seasons.
The 8-year-old and under group swept every swim meet they participated in.
“They really are the rock of our team right now, which is great for the future because we are building from the ground up,” Tatje said.
Belle Terre is currently working toward joining a New Orleans-based swim league prior to the 2016 swim season.