Swim Team Ends Season with a Promising Future Ahead
By Ruben Nieves | Published March 24, 2022
The swim season has officially ended for Kean’s women’s swim team. The team ended their season with 6 wins and finished in 6th place at the Metropolitan Championships with 399 points.
Even though they didn’t get the result they wanted, the team dropped three more school records on the final day of competition. Head coach Chris Swenson was ecstatic with his team’s performance this season.
“As things started to spike in January, there was a lot of unknowns and uncertainty about the season,” Swenson said. “All things considered, this team did a really great job of coming together at the end of the year and I was really proud of them.”
Despite finishing in 6th place, Swenson was proud of his team being able to come together despite having a smaller roster compared to other schools.
“We finished in sixth place with only six girls scoring, that is about a third of an official roster,” Swenson said. “The fact that we were in the top third of the conference with only a third of the girls, I was really proud of their ability to dig in and everybody had season-best times, we did a really great job in coming together.”
On the roster, there are two multi-sport athletes; Sian Seeger, who is on the volleyball team, and Katie Pileggi who is on the lacrosse team. Swenson has high praise for being able to balance both sports and academics.
“It takes a lot of compromise with Don Perkins in volleyball and B.J. Johnson in lacrosse, we were able to balance where both the athletes will get a lot out of both their sports,” Swenson said. “Sian and Katie were valuable pieces of our team this year and this year doesn’t happen without them, I’m really appreciative of their willingness to try two sports.”
During the season, freshman swimmer Teagan Powell earned multiple NJAC Rookie of the Week honors as well as NJAC Swimmer of the Week in January. She also shattered three school records in the 50, 100, and 200 breaststrokes. Powell also broke two records during the Metropolitan Championships with a time of 2:27.97 in the 200 Breast.
“That was awesome,” Powell said. “To be able to drop that much time from resting for two weeks is amazing, I was really excited.”
After completing her freshman season, Powell was very happy with her first year here at Kean.
“My first year was awesome,” Powell said. “Chris (Swenson) exceeded all my expectations as a coach and the team is really tight-knit and I’m excited to see what happens next year.”
With his team so young and with more freshman students coming in, Swenson believes his team will be well prepared for next season.
“We’re going to be young next year as well, as of right now we have eight freshmen coming in next year,” Swenson said. “Swimming is one of those sports where class rank doesn’t matter as much as other sports but there is still that inexperience when it comes to championships, and I thought they did a really great job of stepping up.”
Powell at the beginning of the season set the goal for herself at the beginning of the season to break the 100-breaststroke record and was able to break the record for the 200 breaststroke.
“I set the goal to break the 100-breaststroke record,” Powell said. “I didn’t know about the 200-breaststroke record but seeing I was able to smash that was awesome because I didn’t know about that record.”
With the season over, Powell believes this season was a success.
“I would rate the season ten out of ten, this team worked super hard,” Powell said. “Everyone pushed each other, and everyone was super supportive.”
While in the off-season, Swenson is already thinking about next season.
“Things are looking really good,” Swenson said. “I really expect we’re going to be in contention as soon as next year.”
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