Swim and dive have just begun their 2017 season with the hopes of sending more swimmers and divers to State.

Swim, in particular, emphasizes this goal while also focusing on improving their win record.

“(Our goal is) definitely to win more and try and get our relays and a lot more people into State this year,” said Kyle Chang, senior.

Chang says challenges they’ve faced involve getting their team to focus up, and work harder while practicing. Despite these challenges, Chang still has seen improvement with swim when compared to previous years.

“This season is going way better, we’re scoring way better against teams we would’ve lost against previous years and our relays have a much better chance of getting into State,” Chang said.

For dive, Jayla Burgoon, junior, says their ultimate goal is to make it to State regardless of how well they’ll perform there.

“For dive basically the overall goal is to get a qualifying score to make it to State, and honestly I’d be ok with just making it to State I don’t really care what place I would get just making it there is a huge accomplishment,” Burgoon said.

Burgoon says a big challenge is stepping out of their comfort zones, but this will ultimately pay off in the end.

“One of the biggest challenges is pushing yourself to learn new dives because of course you’re going to be scared about it, you don’t know how it’s going to go, but once you try it you’ll get better scores,” Burgoon said.

Dive has focused on challenging themselves, making it to State, but more than anything simply enjoying themselves as well.

“All of the divers are all really close, we’re all really good friends and our coach is a really good friend with us so it’s like a really big group hanging out, but we’re also doing dive at the same time,” Burgoon said.