Des Moines North High School swim team goes from two swimmers to city championship
The program has kept growing since its return in 2020.
The program has kept growing since its return in 2020.
The program has kept growing since its return in 2020.
Seven years ago, North High School didn't even have a girls' swim team. Now, they are city champs.
The program was cut in 2018 but came back in the fall of 2020. Coach Scott Weinheimer started with just two swimmers, and he grew the program year by year. This year, the team is up to 25 enthusiastic swimmers.
"It has been a good comeback," he said. He is also the coach of the North Side Swim Club, known as the Otters, so he already had a "pool" of candidates to join his new team.
"A lot of the girls in the water have swam with me in some capacity since they were 4 and 5 years old," he said.
Weinheimer served in the reserves for 8 years as a Marine Combat Instructor of Water Survival. One of the things he brought with him to coaching is AMRAPS, which is short for As Many Reps As Possible.
"They are 20-minute workouts on Saturday mornings, or occasionally weekday mornings," Weinheimer said. "We do crazy things, run weights from one end of the pool to the other as many times as they can in 20 minutes. Some of them go down and back in under a minute, carrying 50-pound kettle bells. The idea is to do better than you did the last time."
The players have a lot of fun with it.
"The workouts range from swimming circles in the pool to running laps around the building in your swimsuit," said senior Joella Lebresh. "It is kinda crazy getting up here at 6 a.m. before anybody else is even in the building, running around in your swimsuit. Sometimes I see teachers, and they look just as confused as we do when they see us. We didn't know there'd be anyone there."
The hard work paid off. This season, the Polar Bears beat all the other city schools, plus Ottumwa, to win the South Division of the Iowa Alliance, claiming the illustrious city championship.
"Freshman year, barely having any people, we went into every meet knowing we weren't gonna score high," said Lebresh. "Now we can say we are champions, which is crazy to think about."
"We have worked so hard," said senior Clara Cunningham. "We have done the crazy AMRAP sets and put so many hours in the pool. To see the outcome, it was great."
"It is all stuff they've earned," said Weinheimer. "They have done the work. They stuck it out. We've got girls who three years ago were blowing bubbles in the shallow end and are now swimming varsity events in dual meets. I'm very proud of the work they've done. I'm very proud of the fact that it is here, it's back and it's grown the way it has."
North is 7-2. They have the conference meet on Thursday in Mason City. The Polar Bears swim in the Lonny Kerman Natatorium, named after the late swim coach who led the program for decades.
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