By Michael Butler

A quintet of Tallassee High School swimmers will be competing at the AHSAA State Championships in Huntsville next week, Nov. 19-21.

The Tiger boys qualified for all three relays. Brady Adams will swim in two individual events, the 100-yard backstroke and 100-yard butterfly. He will also race in two of the three relays.

The three relays are the 400-yard free, the 200-yard medley and 200-yard free. In addition to Adams, the relay racers are Braeden Yankey, Will Emfinger, Luke Weldon and Braxton Alvarez.

“It’s a lot of pacing,” said Yankey. “You’ve got to know how to speed up and slow down.”

Weldon said the races can be grueling.

“I’ve had times when I’ve wanted to quit. It’s a lot of conditioning.”

This is Emfinger’s first year with the swim team.

“My mom went behind my back and just threw me in,” he quipped. “I’m a big track guy. It’s another endurance sport.”

The relay team has been shaving time off of their events. They dropped 14 seconds from their 200-medley relay time at the beginning of the season. That included trimming about three seconds from their previous best at the Birmingham Crossplex last week.

“We’re at two minutes,” Weldon added. “We know we can drop that.”

The improvements have come with hard work and sometimes no working facility locally. The Tallassee pool had issues with pumps over the summer. In October it was drained. The guys have traveled to Opelika to continue workouts.

Yankey broke down the schedule for next week.

“Thursday we’ll go in and practice that night. Friday and Saturday we have morning sessions. It’s the top 16. The top 8 go to the night session – the finals.”

Head coach John Mask is already proud of what the group has accomplished.

“We continue to grow each year,” he said of the program, with 23 athletes in all. “The AHSAA swim qualifying times are tough. We had more swimmers really close to qualifying. My goal is to take more next year.”