Peninsula swim looks to replace relay production with freshman talent and veteran experience

It is a year of rebuilding for the Peninsula boys swimming team as they look to fill the spots of some strong swimmers they lost at the end of last year. With that being said, it also represents an opportunity for a fresh start for the team and they are making the most of it by training harder than they have in previous years.

Coach Tim Messersmith spoke to this training and the benefits he is seeing.

“We’re getting stronger. The yardage that we’re doing, the weight room that we’re doing. We have the football strength and conditioning coach,” Messersmith said. “He’s kicking their butts and it’s making a difference.”

What is that difference specifically? It is about building up strength where the team needs it most.

“For swimming, it’s not to build bulk muscle because that limits your flexibility. It’s all focused on flexibility, gaining strength through flexibility, and working our core muscles because so much of swimming has to do with your core,” Messersmith said. “So the stronger we are there, the better swimmers we’re going to be.”

The team will need all the strength they can get as they lost three top swimmers in their relays after they graduated.

“We lost some talent last year and it’s time for these other kids to step up and fill those shoes,” Messersmith said. “It’s going to be tough making state this year, I tell you that, especially in the relays.”

The big swimmers the team lost were seniors Landen Bullock, Ethan Brown, and Dennis Huffer, who all graduated.

One person that Messersmith is looking toward is Hunter Hobbs, a freshman who he hopes can be a good central part of their relay.

“Hunter is our best swimmer in all four strokes but he can’t swim all four parts of the relay,” Messersmith said with a laugh. “I can only put him in one so we’re trying to find some combinations.”

Hobbs is one that Messersmith predicted will have great success even in his first year swimming for the team due to his extensive club experience.

“He’s by far our best swimmer. He’s been a long-time club swimmer,” Messersmith said. “He’ll be a kid that makes state.”

Hobbs, who is now doing both club swim and high school swim at the same time, spoke about his own lofty goals he has for himself.

“I think my biggest priority this year is to make state and then from there, slowly moving up,” Hobbs said. “Eventually, I really want to see my name on the Peninsula record board.”

As for the intense training that the team has been undergoing, Hobbs has taken it in stride.

“I think just because of club, I’ve mentally prepared myself a lot more for stuff like that than a lot of other people,” Hobbs said. “Some people aren’t mentally as cut out for that kind of thing but I think it just builds character for the ones who stuck with it.”

What does that building character look like? It looks like swimming a lot of long distances on a consistent basis.

“We are really pounding the yardage. We just finished our fourth week. We’re averaging eight to night thousand yards a practice which is a lot,” Messersmith said.

One of the senior captains, Alex Newberg, spoke to how the team has been putting in the hard work but how that has resulted in some tradeoffs.

“We’re really putting all the tools that we’ve been learning to work and we put in the hard work and dedication through all our practices,” Newberg. “First week was very tough and some people quit.”

Referred to by many on the team as ‘hell week,’ that first week has been a driving force for the team even as they had some members of the program leave.

“There were probably four kids who quit,” Newberg said. “Swimming is one of the more challenging sports that there is. It’s definitely a mind game. A lot of it is mental. I think that swimming just isn’t meant for everybody. You definitely have to put in the work to see the results.”

This need to sacrifice and push themselves as a team was an ideal echoed by fellow senior captain John Cizin.

“I believe the coaches made the first week more intense so that we’d be more conditioned against the other teams that we’d face and that has proven to be successful so far in that we’ve beaten these teams that we didn’t know that we could beat like Capital,” Cizin said. “Last year when we had 42 people on the team, we barely beat Capital and this year even though we only barely beat them again, we only had 28 roughly. That was a huge moment for us.”

Still, there are no hard feelings from those that have stuck with it and Cizin even expressed that the door was still open for those that left to come back next year.

“We’re glad that we got that week of really hard conditioning because that in the end helped us,” Cizin said. “I would rather them not quit but I guess even though they did they’re still some of my friends. I hope that they’ll come back next year.”

All of this effort is in pursuit of making it back to state, a goal that Messersmith has his eye on after a drought these past couple years.

“As a team, we want to try to get to the state meet,” Messersmith said. “We have not sent anybody to the state meet in the last two years.”

“We’re doing the training necessary to give ourselves a shot at that,” Messersmith said.

This story was originally published December 19, 2019 at 6:00 AM.