The Lions swim team swam 55 miles altogether last saturday at the annual Swim-a-thon fundraiser. They were given a couple weeks to gather pledges from friends and family before the event. The pledges can be for either the entirety of the hour or by per lap.

“Someone would say ‘I’ll give you five bucks’ or to make it interesting, friends and relatives will pledge them ten cents which gets pretty interesting, if you can do 100 lengths or 200 lengths,” Coach Sully said. “The relatives need to kind of know what they’re walking into. We don’t wanna come back and say ‘oh you owe us 545 dollars’. It’s just interesting to have a per lap pledge, it pushes you that much harder within the hour. ”

Sully splits the team into two groups so that there is enough space for the swimmers. Then for an hour straight they try to swim as hard as they can manage.

“I’ve done it with one of the groups for the past seven years,” Sully said. “I didn’t do it this year because I haven’t been swimming. It’s very tough. You pretty much feel awful by the end of an hour. Our practices are two hours but we never swim consistently for that long.”

The funds will go into the swim booster account and will help pay for out of town trips, banquets and supplies. They don’t know how much has been raised yet due to still being in the process of collecting. Several swimmers broke their individual records.Sophomore Jayton De La Zerda accomplished 182 (4550 yards) lengths this year and 179 lengths last year with a difference of 1.68%. Junior Tanner Hartwick had 185 (4625 yards) lengths both years. Sophomore Matt Whieldon swam 200 (5000 yards)  lengths this year and 179 lengths last year with a 11.73% difference. Junior Tanja Milanovic swam the most lengths with 205 (5125 yards) this year and 201 lengths last year with a 1.99% difference.

“I swim about 22 hours a week,” Milanovic said. “Every year I get at least 2 per lap pledges. Last year a guy was like ‘I’m gonna do 3 dollars per lap’ and I swam 200 laps so I raised 600 dollars. He was like ‘I’m not doing that again’.”

The next meet will be at Apache Block House pool from 1:00p.m. to 2:00p.m. this Saturday. The team will be up against Vista Ridge and McNeil.