The Fossil Ridge High School swim and dive team has returned home after almost a month of meets away. In the first meet back the Sabercats beat Loveland High School with 222 points to the Indians 83 points. The boys then competed at Mountain View High School for the Mountain View Invite and took first place with 827 points out of 12 teams. On Tuesday, April 30 the Fort Collins city teams competed in a City Meet and celebrated senior night all together where the team said goodbye to 7 seniors and took home first place with 705 points to end their season.

This is all ahead of the boy’s conference meet and then the state meet, where the boys took second place in their last season to lose their first place reign to Regis Jesuit High School. Conference begins on May 10 for preliminary swim events and then the preliminary diving events and finals for both swim and dive begin on May 11. The team is hoping to have more members make qualifying times for the state team, which currently has 12 members with state cuts. When asked if the training process had changed at all since the last season going into this year Head Coach Mark Morehouse said, “Not really. We believe in our process. We performed well last year, we just didn’t have quite enough depth. We focus on what we can control.”

Once again the state meet will be hosted at Veterans Memorial Aquatic Center (VMAC) in Thornton on May 16 and 17. Since the beginning of the season, the team has seen a lot of growth with “tremendous individual improvements, those make our team stronger,” said Coach Morehouse. That said, the team also faces a few obstacles when looking at state, the biggest one being “focus, the end of the year is crazy and we need to ignore the distractions and let the performances come to us.” After two big wins against city rivals and a 12 team invite win, the Coach Morehouse feels “good. We have worked hard and plan to have our best performances at the biggest meets.”

While the regular season has come to an end, the biggest meets of the year stand ahead and for 7 of the members, it is also the last two meets before they graduate. The seniors for this season include Christian Conrady, who goes to Liberty Common Charter School and swims with Fossil, Cole Glover, Jonah “JJ” Holt, Ted Kim, Josh Lee, Cole Mason, and Paul McBride. With four of the seniors being National Interscholastic Swimming Coaches Association (NISCA) Academic All-Americans, those seniors are Christian Conrady, Ted Kim, Josh Lee, Cole Mason. Although losing the members is hard Coach Morehouse gave a bittersweet comment on how he feels about the seniors leaving, “It will be sad. We have some awesome guys who have made huge contributions to our program. Their legacy will live on forever.”