By: Jimmy Brooks, News Staff

The swimming & diving team had the pleasure of traveling to Puerto Rico during winter break from Jan. 2-9. The trip served as an opportunity for the team to bond and train for the rest of the season, all while soaking up some much needed sun.

The team spent the majority of their time in Ponce, located on the south shore of the island. The warm climate and rigorous first semester they had just completed could have given team members a reason to slouch, but they treated Puerto Rico like any other practice, giving it their all for a full seven days.

“It was a great week,” head coach Roy Coates said. “We used the trip as a mid-season evaluation of where the girls are performance-wise.”

With a full week away from family, friends and the distractions of home, the team members naturally turned to each other for company and entertainment.

“It was definitely a great bonding experience for the team,” senior diver Jennyfer Roberts said. “Little things like the scavenger hunt were good opportunities to get together and just bond with the rest of the team.”

The Puerto Rico trip cleanly divides the first and second half of the swim season. Subsequently, Coates said he saw this fact as an opportunity to designate the trip as place to change the team’s training approach.

“The girls are in about as good physical shape as they’re ever going to be after the trip, so we use all the progress we’ve made in Puerto Rico as an opportunity to shift the way we train,” Coates said. “We’ve been trying to build up stamina thus far, but the approach from here on out will be to work on speed and power.”

While the team did put in countless hours practicing and preparing for the upcoming second half of the season, which includes a meet at Drexel University Jan. 15, the team did have some downtime too.

“We went out and ate dinner at a restaurant in an old, quaint town,” Coates said. “That was probably one of my favorite moments of the trip.”