As a member of the swim team at Geneva High School, I am not technically a member of a swim team. Instead, I am one of just more than a dozen girls who form the “club.”

Why are we a club and not a team? Without the pool, the money to build a pool, or an adequate place to practice, we can only have swim practice two or three times a week. This would leave us at a major disadvantage with girls from other teams, who have 11 or 12 practices per week. In order to stay in shape, most swimmers stay on their non-high school, or “club,” teams during the high school season. Therefore, to comply with IHSA regulations, we cannot be listed as an official team, or we would have to miss the majority of our workouts.

This description might make us sound like a group of mangy, unorganized, over-chlorinated girls without any sense of unity. But that would be wrong. We’re a team; we swim like a team, cheer like a team, and eat like a team. And we owe it all to one woman – Mary Keyzer, social studies teacher and the-one-and-only swim coach of the Geneva Vikings Swim Team.