El Campo set to host district swim meet
By KRIS BAGLEY sports@leader-news.com

L-N Photo by Kris Bagley Hit The Water Kristi Galow will be one of El Campo's swimmers in Saturday's district swim meet held at the El Campo Aquatic Center.

Months of work will be realized in one day as El Campo hosts the District 25-4A Swim Meet Saturday.

Scheduled for a 10 a.m. start, teams from Wharton, Bay City, Angleton and other areas will arrive for an 8:30 warm-up. The event should last through the afternoon and will feature several of the area's best swimmers.

For El Campo Swim Coach Richard Nava, the meet could not come sooner.

"I'm feeling ready," Nava said. "We've had some injuries, of course, and some other set-backs, but I'm ready. They girls seem to be ready and the boys."

El Campo is expected to have another strong showing at the district meet. The girls team is poised for one of their strongest outings yet while the boys also have a chance to place in the top six in a few events to advance to the regional meet Feb. 8 and 9.

"I have some boys that are juggling other sports (like baseball and basketball)," Nava said. "Four of my boys told me that they want to try to do it all and they're doing it all, so our boys team is maybe not as strong as our girls team, but they're still in it."

El Campo will compete in 13 of the meet's 24 events against some familiar opponents.

Both the boys and girls teams have seen every district school through the course of the year in dual meets. If Saturday's district match is anything like the dual meets, El Campo should fare well. Nava said, however, that all teams have improved over the season, including his own.

"I think the meets have prepared us," he said. "The only thing that I'm worried about the dual meets is that not everybody has the facilities that we have. There are teams that don't have facilities so they've had light practices during the year while we've had wonderful practices. Because their pool isn't heated or they have a broken pool or something, they're having to miss practice.

"Their times at dual meets, now that they've had some practice time, they may have gotten faster and kind of bettered themselves over the last month and we (have) their old times (to compare). It's kind of tricky in the sense that now that they've had the practice time, the times from six weeks ago are not going to be accurate. They've most likely gotten faster, stronger and more conditioned. We have too."

Nava said teams will have to guard against overconfidence because of potentially misleading dual meet results. With improved teams, swimming fans could see several last-second finishes.

"It's one of those deals where you can't slack off, 'Oh, we beat that team by 10 seconds,'" Nava said. "Well, that was two months ago when they were with a broken pool and had three days of practice. Now, they've had 30 practices and their times have dropped.

"It can fool you and it can hurt you. It's like playing a team in the pre-season and saying two months later, 'We can beat them.' It's a different team. They've had more practice time and so have we. We'll see. If we do our best, we'll be OK."

El Campo's best have earned several high placings in the events.

Though names of Saturday's swimmers are not yet official, rankings were determined by some of the best individual and team times of the year. The Ricebirds and Lady 'Birds will enter the meet with placings in the top six for seven of their total 13 competing events.

One strength El Campo has going into the meet is its success in relays. Nava said he expects the relay teams to give a boost to every area of the competition for the girls and boys.

"When you have strong relays, it picks up every other part of it," he said. "I think if you have a couple of individual swimmers who are good and excel, the team surrounds them, but it's a different atmosphere when a relay does well or two relays do well. You have more of a team.

"Swimming is like track. It's an individual/team sport with a relay. You're running your individual events just like you're swimming your individual events, but your relays are a team. I think our relays have picked up everybody's spirits. We'll have three relays in this district for the girls and we'll see what happens."

Regardless of swimming experience or involvement, Nava said Saturday will be a great chance for sports fans to support the community. The excitement of a truly competitive swim meet, the coach said, can give any fan a great look at true athleticism.

"I think even if you're not involved with swimming or you don't have any swimming family, if you give it a chance, it will grow on you because it's that competitive," Nava said. "To me, it's as competitive as basketball, football or baseball because the screaming, the rush and the high you get from that environment is incredible.

"It's a release too. In other words, you're there and the starter says, 'Take your mark." Then the gun goes off and it's on. The better person that day will win. The final thing that happens is for that moment, you are first, second or third. It does get my blood going."