BROKEN BOW—Summer is right around the corner (hopefully!) and those pools will be filled with water before we know it. The Cosmos Swim Team is gearing up for another year of summer swimming. The Cosmos are the local team for USA Swimming and welcome swimmers ages six and older.
Coach Shawn Morris has been coaching local swimmers for 15 years and says the summer program is a fun activity for swimmers at any level.
“It’s a great opportunity. The neat thing about swimming is you are always trying to better yourself. You increase your skills, you’re racing against yourself a lot of times seeing if you can get fast times and developing skills. With those younger ones that’s what we focus on. We focus on getting the basics down,” Coach Morris said.
Swim practice takes place weekday mornings in June and July at the Broken Bow Swimming Pool; 7:30-9 a.m. for experienced swimmers and 8:30 to 9:30 a.m. for beginners.
About five competitive swim meets are held throughout the summer in Broken Bow (weekend after Father’s Day), Grand Island, Hastings, Kearney, and a qualifier-only Midwest Championship meet in Lincoln at the end of the summer.
Coach Michaela Schweitzer has coached with the Cosmos for two years and encourages parents and swimmers to stop by North Park Elementary this Thursday from 5-7 p.m. to sign up for the summer.
“On the 15th we will have swim team signups from 5-7 p.m. at North Park school. There is the book night that night so come on down and Shawn and I will be there and you’ll get to see some other swimmers and parents down there as well,” Coach Schweitzer said. “And they have a lot of fun. Some kids come back because it’s fun for them.”
Fees include the USA Swimming registration, practices, and meet entry fees. Meets are optional for those wishing to participate. Cost is approximately $100 for ages six to eight and $135 for ages nine and up, to a maximum amount of $300 per family. A Broken Bow pool pass is also required, as is a birth certificate for first-time swimmers.
Coach Morris and Coach Schweitzer take time to work with swimmers to have fun in the water and improve on various strokes such as freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly.
Approximately 50 swimmers from Custer County and beyond swam for the Cosmos last summer. Contact Shawn Morris or Michaela Schweitzer with questions or call Andra White at 870-2421.
“It’s fun to see the kids improve over the season. They really do. We have kids progressing from not being able to get across the short end of the pool to being able to swim full 25s and 50s and that’s always exciting. And their confidence. The boost you see in those kids’ confidence as they just get more comfortable in the water and progress their skills; that’s a pretty neat deal,” Coach Morris said.
