Three meets in a one-week span meant the Duncan swimmers kept busy, but their coach remains pleased with how they are performing.

Although the Demons didn’t all post their best times in last Thursday’s meet at Altus, swim coach Andrew Bowers said he wants the swimmers to keep focusing on being competitive.

“We were definitely tired,” he said. “Three meets in a week is a pretty difficult stretch for us. But I’m not too concerned about the times. It was more about being able to compete.”

Some of the Demon swimmers posted respectable times.  For the boys, Chad Harp was seeded at 29.53 seconds in the boys 50 meter freestyle, then improved his time to 29.32. He also improved his seed time (1:08.61) in the 100 meter freestyle, finishing in 1:08.51.

A.J. Stewart also had a good showing, swimming 1:30.76 in the 100-meter breaststroke, improving upon his seed time (1:36) by nearly six seconds.

For the girls Alex Turkett was seeded with a time of 1:20.94 in the 100 meter freestyle, then turned in a time of 1:20.51. In the girls 50 meter freestyle, Elisa Mitcham had a seed time of 56.32, then improved her time to 46.57.

Most of all, Bowers is happy with how great the swimmers’ attitudes have been this season.

“They have really come closer as a team despite all the adversity,” he said.

Junior Hannah Lonney agreed. She said that the swimmers have much team unity and that the chance to use the pool at the Quality Inn helped. The swimmers are expected to be back at the Simmons Center for practices, as the pool is expected to open later this week.

Duncan has one more meet, at Lawton Tuesday, before the conference meet Jan. 30 in Altus. The Lawton meet is a chance for the Demons to compete against the three Lawton schools (Lawton High, Eisenhower, MacArthur) and Enid, which will make for a quality field.

“We’ve had three days off, so we should be fresh, healthy and ready to go,” Bowers said. “And the (Simmons) pool should finally be open by the time we come back Wednesday. A full-sized pool will really help us conditioning wise.”

Lonney said the swimmers should only continue to get better and looks forward to the conference and regional meets.

“I know we are all practicing harder each time we get into the pool,” she said. “Everyone wants to do well at regionals and go to state. I’m hoping that the whole team can get to state.”

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