After swimming the boys 50 meter freestyle, James Buchanan High School swimmers gathered to give their team’s “senior swimmers” an honorary night. Each one of the six senior swimmers walked beside a parent or guardian along the pool edge. They were handed a flower and a bag of goodies.
Six were honored, but only four were actually seniors.
Two of the “seniors,” Line Feuillatre and Nicolas Ruiz,foreign exchange studentswere honored because they would not be able to swim the following year as they will have returned to their home countries.
“Well, I’m sad that it is the end of the season, but I’m glad that I could be on the swim team this year. [My experience] has been really cool, back in France it’s not better, but it’s not worse. It’s really different, the school is different,” Feuillatre said.
As for the other four honored, only two were actually from James Buchanan: Carissa Myers and Sofia Snider.
“It’s a bittersweet feeling, it has been good, it has been fun, but I’m excited to see what my next phase of life will be,” Myers said.
The other two seniors were from Mcconnellsburg High School: William Dovey and Ethan Hopkins.
Since Mcconnellsburg lacks a pool, some swimmers decided to join the James Buchanan Swim Team. The team displayed lots of diversity with the combination of members from different schools and countries.
Their last home meet gave many teammates the opportunity to meet new personal records and cut back on their times.
“I don’t know. I feel like I haven’t had much time and it feels like yesterday I just started swimming and it kind of hasn’t sunk in that this is my last home meet left,” Snider said,”For me [the season] has been good, a lot better than my junior year, I dropped a lot of time, but as a team we could’ve probably done better.”
Unfortunately, the team lost the meet, but their opponent, Northern High School, reciprocated the respect that James Buchanan gave with many high fives and a “ roller coaster” cheer to finish off a memorable last home meet of the season.
