Swimming and Diving has been a sport available to the students at Hastings Senior High, but after a couple board meetings and a vote at city hall, the sport will now be available to all students who attend one of the three schools in Hastings. Hastings High, Saint Cecilia, and Adams Central will now have a cooperative swimming program allowing all students to swim together and compete as one team.
“The amount of swimmers it will bring to the program will help us compete on the same level that the schools in Lincoln and Omaha do. I know last year we barely had enough girls to do two girls relays and most teams have like four girl’s relays. So I am excited to see what the new swimmers bring to the table,” Senior Katie Fast said.
The cooperative plan for swimming and diving has been a topic amongst the schools for about 30 years. The only cities that did not have a cooperative program were high populated Lincoln and Omaha, and other surrounding places. Grand Island could compete with schools from these cities. McCook could compete with them too. Why couldn’t Hastings? The cooperative program is something that has been put off for decades, but Charles and Whitney Scribner decided enough was enough.
“Our push for the co-op started about two years ago with a conversation at a track meet with Mrs. Douglas wanting to know what we thought about co-ops. She took over working with the other AD’s from St Cecilia and Adams Central developing a plan for the co-op to work. We worked with the High School team and HYAC swim team to show support for the co-op once it was brought to the school board,” said Head Coach Charles Scribner.
Some members of Hastings Public school board were opposed to the idea of having cooperative swimming and diving, but not enough to get a majority vote against it.
“There were several reasons why there was an opposing view of the co-op. Those reasons were not about swimming in general but how they thought it could impact Hastings Public Schools. The sport itself was never the issue,” Assistant Coach Whitney Scribner said.
Some people were worried about a student from a different school taking the spot of a student from Hastings High. With any team sport this issue would be a big problem, but since swimming and diving are very individual sports for the most part, not competing is nothing to worry about. The only spots that could be taken from a swimmer is a relay spot, and anyone who wants to dive will dive at every meet.
“There are events with unlimited entries and opportunities to have multiple relays in the same race in certain meets so everyone will get to chance to compete. You have to earn your spot for your events and for the relay teams,” Charles said.
There are also some meets swimmers have to qualify for. These meets are seldom, so there is still plenty of pool time for everyone, especially since Hastings is hosting seven home meets this year, including GNAC. That is a guaranteed seven meets that anyone who joins can participate and compete in, plus all the other duals and triangulars in between.
Senior Johan Visoso-Marino has been on the swimming side of the Swimming and Diving team for three consecutive seasons and he is very excited to have the three schools join together to form one team.
“Joining the schools of Hastings will just give us a new edge to work off of. With more swimmers we can score more points, and more points means winning more meets,” Visoso-Marino said.
All the schools, together, as a whole, are making history. This is a new chapter of swimming for Hastings. High school students in the city of Hastings interested in being apart of the first ever cooperative Swimming and Diving team, can contact the head coach at his email scrib.charles@gmail.com or talk to their school’s Athletic Director.
