Spotlight on Girls’ Swim Team

Mika Park, Staff Reporter

One of the more unique qualities of Millennium Brooklyn as a high school in NYC is that a girls swim team is offered. The season runs from late August to early November, with tryouts in the fall when school returns after summer break. The coach is a teacher from Millennium High School in Manhattan, Ms. Colleen Simms. Team members practice three times a week, and the duration is about two hours. Practice is held in the basement pool of the John Jay Campus and at Seward Park in Chinatown. Over the summer when the team did not have access to a pool, they practiced on dry land by lifting weights in the Millennium Manhattan gymnasium. When the team competes, each member competes individually with the following strokes: freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke, and butterfly.

The team is comprised of members from both MBHS and MHS, giving girls from both schools an opportunity to link up and bond over a sport that they love.

Claire Sigal, the co-captain, has been a member of the team since the ninth grade, when it was only a swim club. In 2012, her sophomore year, it became a JV team, and since 2013 it has been a Varsity team. She is excited about all of the “really talented freshman” from MBHS that have joined the team this year. To Claire, “what’s unique about swimming is that it often feels like an individual sport, because you compete as an individual, but you practice with your team and travel and that brings the teammates together to feel like a family and feel supported.”