Kicking off their season with meets in both Topeka and Lansing, the Manhattan High School boys swim team placed third and fifth respectively. Starting their season off with a bang was Willow Graves, who qualified for State in three events, a relay and two individual swims. 

“[The meets] were really good. I placed really high and I felt like I dropped a lot of time,” Graves said. “Since I did drop a lot of time, it was really nice.”

Graves swam a 5:07.15 in the 500-free and a 1:04.26 in the 100 breaststroke, placing second in both. The 200 Medley relay consisting of sophomores Max Steffensmier, Graves, Ethan Balman and Sam Staedtler had a second place finish with a time of 1:44.27. Senior Mitchell Bunger placed fourth in both the 200 and 500 freestyle, going a 1:59.77 and 5:32.43 respectively. 

For some the meet wasn’t all that was expected. 

“I didn’t feel very good, I don’t think any of us did,” Balman said. “We didn’t put up the times we were expecting.” 

While there is room for improvement, the meet showed what this team has to offer. 

“[The] first meet I was pretty happy with [I saw] lots of improvements from people from their time trials which is always the goal, just to get better,” head coach Alex Brown said. “A lot of athletes had times that were really good for the first meet of the season, a few people were pretty close to best ever times and it’s always good when it’s only meet one.”

Three days later the team was back in the pool competing at the Lasing Relays meet. This is a special meet that consists of only relays. It is a great meet to work on regular season relays, as well as getting to compete in relays that aren’t swam at any other meet. The most important part of this meet and having a chance at winning or placing high is having people. This year faced setbacks with many swimmers unable to compete due to sickness. Even with the lack of numbers, the team placed 5th and was only 22 points off of second place. 

“A lot of people were missing which makes it hard because at this meet, you need four for a relay,” Brown said. “If you want to have a chance to be in a top three you pretty much need two relays per event and when you don’t physically have enough wind bodies made that hard but we still got fit and we weren’t too far out from number two, which is frustrating having a lot of people out and then being that close.”

Heading into the rest of the season the team hopes to see improvement from everyone, as well as qualify more individuals and relays for State. 

“[We want to] get more state qualifying times,” Brown said. “We got several on Wednesday with our medley relay and then Willow getting the 500 and 100 breaststroke. A lot of people were really close to their state cuts but they did get the consideration times, and then just win as many meats as we can as well as see improvements. We’ve got some time just to get some training in before then and then we’ll have just under a month till we hit our fourth meet of the year.”