The defending conference champion Platte County girls swim team has their eyes set on another conference title, but they hope to do so by adding a unique community-focused tradition to their home swim meets.
Rather than charging a standard admission fee for home meets, the Pirates’ girls swim team will collect non-perishable food items to donate to those in need. It was an idea the girls came up with that made head coach Britton Johnson proud, given his emphasis on growing each swimmer not only in the pool but also outside of it as individuals and scholars.
“I try to focus on improving them as ladies as well,” Johnson said. “This means character or academic. This is exactly the type of thing I refer to when talking about being better ladies.”
The Pirates enter the new season with expectations of competing for another conference title and qualifying more swimmers for the state meet. Platte County senior Ashleigh Cruce returns for her senior year as the team’s only individual state swimmer last season, although Mackenzie Johnson qualified as a sophomore last year but missed the top-32 cut to swim at state.
“Our team is so successful because of our depth,” Britton Johnson said. “We have a lot of solid swimmers on our team and get a lot of 4-8 at the conference meets out of these ladies. This is why we win invitationals and conference, because we have so many quality swimmers.”
Cruce expects to make her way back to the state championships for the third consecutive year. After cracking the top 25 in the 100-yard butterfly as a sophomore, Cruce made it inside the top 15 last year in the butterfly with a time of 1 minute, 3.01 seconds. She also hopes to improve her 100-yard breaststroke, swimming 1:16.90 in the preliminaries at state last year.
Platte County hopes send Cruce and several others for the state meet, which is slated for Feb. 19-20 in St. Peters. Mackenzie Johnson stands a better chance of making the cut to swim with freshman Remi Woolard (200 freestyle) and junior Ronnie Benford also pushing for a state appearance individually.
Another strength Platte County hopes to continue building from was its relay success. All three relay teams qualified for state last year, with the Pirates losing a pair of seniors from their 200-yard medley relay, but they do return all four from their 400-yard freestyle relay with Johnson, Benford, Erin Anderson and Alexandria Yurko.
The Pirates aren’t focused on records; they just care about improving with each opportunity and pushing themselves as far as they can go.
“I fully expect our ladies to practice hard and continue to improve times throughout the season, with best times coming at the end of the season,” Johnson said. “They have been swimming hard at practice and are already having some great times early in the year.”
Before the postseason roles around, Platte County will face statewide competition at the CoMO Invitational on Jan. 9-10 in Columbia. The Pirates will also host their own PCHS Invitational on Jan. 24 in Platte City.