The girl’s swimming team have had to push through practices in a pool with a broken heater and algae growing in the bottom last week.

“The hardest thing is keeping motivated,” senior Jordan Claeys. “Just wanting to jump into freezing cold water after a long day of school and after not wanting to be there in general because practices are hard. It’s hard to keep up morale”

With this problem, the captains, Claeys and junior Kelsey Taylor, did everything to keep the team motivated.

“We just kept counting down the numbers for each set and we would say things like ‘we only have five more guys, we can do it,’” Claeys said.

To go along with a cold water, the pool started growing algae.

“It started showing up after the second week,” Taylor said. “I don’t want to touch it.”

The captains said they can swim around the algae, so the main thing they focus on is the water, but that doesn’t stop them from being disgusted by growing bacteria.

“The ground [of the pool] would be slimy and slippery when we would step on it,” Claeys said.

After two weeks of swimming in these rough pool conditions, the girls are excited to be getting the heater fixed and ready for the algae to go away.

“We did our best to keep everybody’s spirits up,” Claeys said.