By Ryan Schafernak, Reporter
When students, teachers and outsiders think of Kaneland athletics, they typically think of football, basketball and track and field, but one thing that slips their mind is that there are Kaneland students who participate in a variety of sports outside of District 302.
Junior Riley Coyle has been swimming since she was eight years old and currently swims for Academy Bullets swim club at Marmion Academy in Aurora.
Coyle believes that swimming should get as much publicity as all the other sports.
Sophomore Ty Ament and junior Phil Cotsinger both swim at the YMCA in Dekalb on the same team.
“Season’s going good, it’s a lot of fun,” Ament said.
“The meets are similar to track, most are individual events. The distances are the same between track and swimming.”
Sophomore Victoria Clinton who has been swimming since she was in 2nd grade, and has been swimming for the Bullets Academy swim team at the Vaughn Center in Aurora since she was in 7th grade.
“It’s both fun and tiring” Clinton said. She wishes that Kaneland had a pool.
“Every four years swimming gets the limelight but only for the Olympics but that’s it,” Coyle said, “meets work out like this, every team warms up in the pool for about thirty minutes and then the events start. Each team has at least one swimmer in each event, and the events have heats, first heat is for the slower swimmers, the last heat is the fastest swimmers.”
“Swimming is something that everyone should try.” Coyle said.
Krissy Frohlich, junior at Kaneland, has been swimming since she was 8, and has been competing for 8 years. Frohlich agrees that swimming should get more publicity.
“Each team inside is respect, motivation and understanding to each swimmer,”
Frolich wishes that Kaneland would acknowledge swimming as an equal sport to others in the school, along with getting more publicity, similar to football. In later years she wishes to swim for Notre Dame.
With a lot of practices and hours in the water, she believes she can reach her goal. Currently she is out of the water but has been with 4 amazing teams.