The Hillsdale swim team had an inter-squad meet Sept 23. Courtesy | Hillsdale College Athletic Department

Charger swim is gearing up for another season of record smashing achievements and excellent personal performance with the addition of eight new athletes to its roster.

“I think our culture is super positive and I am very pleased with how things have been going so far,” said senior and captain Caroline Holmes. “I think we’re going to have a really solid, competitive team.”

Head coach Kurt Kirner said the new swimmers are a talented group of recruits.

“This year we were able to replenish most of the talent base that we had from the graduates last year,” he said.

They’re also embracing the team’s culture, Kirner said.

“We have an individual sport where they work as individuals but it’s a team sport where they need to come together and they need to train together and they need to compete together,” he said. “They’re really working off each other and I think it’s going to be a good year judging by the feeling in practice.”

On Sept. 23, the team had an intersquad meet, which Kirner said went well.

“I was pleasantly surprised with the totality of the times,” he said. “Judging based upon what I’ve seen in the past 16 years of coaching, I thought this was a pretty good one.”

The Chargers will compete for the first time Oct. 14 at Bethel University.

“The competition isn’t going to be real strong for the first meet, which is fine because I want kids to swim within their lanes. I don’t want them to be thinking about competition right off the bat,” Kirner said. “I always emphasize, ‘just give your best effort,’ and it’s easier to do that when they’re just focusing on what’s going to happen in their lane and not be overly concerned about how fast everybody is.”

Freshman Izzy Ondracek said she is excited about her first collegiate meet.

“I’m really looking forward to being able to race and to see what we can do given how young our team is,” she said.

Seven of the team’s new athletes are freshmen, but one, junior Lucia Ruchti, is a transfer from Lees-McRae College. They join ten other women on the team — two sophomores, five juniors, and three seniors — for a roster of 18.

The seniors on the team are Holmes, Sarah Pataniczek, and Phoebe Johnston.

“The three of us have really grown,” Holmes said. “We have transformed because of the Hillsdale experience and so I’m very honored to stand beside both of them. They’re both rock stars.”

Their Hillsdale experience has been different from most.

“It’s very meaningful. We’ve been through a lot. You think about when we were freshmen during the COVID year and it was crazy,” Holmes said. “But we were able to get through it together.”

Holmes and Pataniczek are captains, along with junior Emma Dickhudt.

“They are really just true leaders,” Kirner said. “We obviously have some figureheads on the team in terms of kids who are very top of the conference. We’ve got a couple of All Americans, and they provide leadership also, not necessarily as captains, but just in terms of getting after the workout and getting going.”

Ondracek said she’s seen the leadership of her older teammates in and out of the pool.

“The upperclassmen have been really gracious about helping us with classes and studying and preparation and just the new workout style for some of us,” she said.

Last year, Hillsdale finished second in the conference championship meet to Findlay University, its perpetual rival. Findlay’s roster is about double the size of Hillsdale’s, but Kirner said beating Findlay is not the goal for this season — guiding athletes toward excellent personal performances is.

“I’m not a coach that invests a lot into ego. I’m very much about making sure that my athletes understand this whole perception of control. They can’t control how fast Findlay is or what they recruit,” Kirner said. “Whether we can measure up to them at the end of the season, that’s hard to say, but I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.”

Findlay’s head coach of 11 years resigned in May to pursue a coaching position at Augustana University and Kirner said other teams in the conference have shaken up their coaching staffs too.

“There are a lot of young, new coaches,” he said. “Hopefully the old dog — meaning me — has a few tricks up his sleeve.”