Senior leadership key to success of Hopewell Valley swimming program
HOPEWELL >> There are certain ingredients that make a sports team great.
Having talented individuals certainly helps and putting in an extra shift of hard work in practice can pay dividends in the waning weeks of a long season. Combine that with the right mixture of leadership, and you get the Hopewell Valley swimming program.
This season has been the most successful for both the boys and girls teams in more than a decade. For the first time since 2005, both Colonial Valley Conference Valley division titles reside with the Bulldogs. The teams went a combined 9-0 in division meets.
Coaches Dennis Atkinson and Lauren Ashman attribute this season’s success to the swimmers who are leaders inside and outside the pool.
“Swimming, like a lot of other sports, can be very mentally draining. The attitude from senior leadership trickles down to the other classes,” Atkinson said. “Swimming is much more of a team sport than the average fan sees. Having a positive environment, which is created by the seniors, especially, helps make us successful.”
“These kids really care. They care about one another but they also care about their times, they want to get better and improve,” Ashman said. “Having that mentality has made them successful inside the pool and out. They’re really good characters. They have good sportsmanship and they
support one another 24/7.”
In total there are eight seniors in the water for Hopewell this year. Boys captains Armaan Desai and Alex Helmrich, girls captains Ava D’Alessandro, Charlotte Kavanaugh and Regan Sherman, along with Olivia Doherty, Kelley Dwyer and Pavel Sverdlov.
You can tell by being around this group that they are truly behind each other and want to see everyone on each team succeed. They are influenced by prior upperclassmen of the program.
“We’re all four-year swimmers so we’ve seen all the seniors before us lead and have taken examples
from them,” Helmrich said. “They laid the groundwork and we’ve been able to follow in their footsteps.”
It’s not just leading by example, however. The mentality of an athlete is a tricky thing to keep in line. In the midst of a long and oftentimes challenging season, there are sure to be mental slip-ups along the way.
Helping teammates get into the right mindset is another task for the leaders of the team.
“As seniors, we know what goes on at this point. Coaches give a lot of technical advice, we’re always here to give mental advice,” Sherman said. “It’s easy for
a coach to tell you to just go out there and be fast. But we know it can be hard sometimes. We just have to believe in what we’ve been working toward.”
At the outset of the season, division titles were what both teams were striving for. They achieved that. The next goal is to make a deep run in the state tournament. That wasn’t in the cards for the boys team as its season came to a heartbreaking end last Thursday after it dropped an 86-84 quarterfinal meet to Rumson Fair-Haven.
The girls team received a double-bye as the two seed in its bracket, with a semifinal meet against Shore Regional High awaiting them on Tuesday.
Despite the high seed, the girls don’t seem to feel the pressure that would typically come with such a label.
“I don’t think there’s a target on our backs. We’re comfortable where we are,” D’Alessandro said. “I don’t
think we feel the pressure, we feel confident.”
Regardless of how the season ends for the girls, there is no question that this season has been a success for both teams. The class of 2023 has left a major impact on the Hopewell swimming program, one that surely will be felt by future Bulldog swimmers.
“I’ll remember the support they have for each other and the respect they have for us as well,” Ashman said. “All around they are caring and supportive. They’ve created a nice, safe environment for everybody to flourish in.”
“The culture that they built is amazing. At some of these close meets, it’s packed and it gets loud,” Atkinson said. “We can be the team that sits back on their phones not paying attention, or we can be the team that gets behind each other. I think that goes a long way into building a culture and that’s what they’ll be remembered for.”