Oxford Swim Team Finishes Season Strong

By John Macon Gillespie
Contributor
hottytoddynews@gmail.com

Oxford High School’s swim teams finished off a successful season with a second and third overall finish at state this year.

The girls finished second as a team with an individual title from Julia Dennis in the 50 and 500-yard freestyle while the boys finished third with a title in the 100-yard freestyle from Charles Byars. Oxford swim coach Robert Gonzalez was proud of his teams for overcoming the challenges presented by COVID-19 this season and putting together a successful campaign.

“It was definitely the most challenging season, just trying facilities for the kids to practice in, to try to find pool time and following all the protocols,” Gonzalez said. “We had to really navigate some high hurdles this year.”

One of those high hurdles even came on the day of the state finals when the pool the teams were using in Tupelo was low on water due to a power outage the night before.

“I’m 33 years old and have been around swimming my entire life, and I’ve never gone to a pool before and been told that they’re missing water,” Gonzalez said. “That issue took several hours to fix. They still came back after a seven-hour delay and just swam lights out the entire evening. It was a great way to finish the season.”

It was a particularly great finish for the aforementioned Charles Byars who came home with some titles of his own.

“It felt great to know that all my work paid off,” Byars said. “At one point, I was very worried that I would not be able to compete this year [due to COVID], but eventually, the team was able to find a pool, and then I knew everything would work out.”

This sentiment was reflected by fellow-champion Julia Dennis.

“It was a very proud moment,” Dennis said. “After a season full of new challenges like COVID restrictions, changing pool locations and quarantined teammates, it was exciting to know all that hard work and uncertainty was worth it.”

Oxford swim had two seniors in Neil Cipkowski and Ellinor Maxwell who had to navigate their final high school season in the midst of COVID-19. For Maxwell, the fear over the summer of potentially not being able to swim again was difficult to handle.

“It was disheartening, especially since I did not get to achieve all of my goals last year,” Maxwell said. “I was afraid I wouldn’t get the chance to do better. I decided that even if we did not get the chance to compete, I would still work as hard as I could at every practice and simply hope for the best.”

Now, Maxwell has goals of swimming collegiately and is considering schools such as Auburn, LSU and California.

Cipkowski was another senior who had to deal with the difficulties of COVID leading up to this season but was proud for what he described as the best season the program had seen in a long time.

“It was a huge adjustment for everyone, especially after being stuck in our homes for months without exercise,” Cipkowski said. “Once we finally were allowed to swim again, we all knew it was absolutely necessary to be fully focused and aware for every second spent in the pool. I’m proud to say that everyone on the team flew beyond that which was expected of them, and we had our best season in years.”