Diving into the weekend, two Redhawk swimmers, senior Mallory Showalter and sophomore Maria Oushalkas, are competing in the 5A Region II swim meet Friday and Saturday at the Bruce Eubanks Natatorium with hopes of securing their spot in the state meet.

“Our team did a great job with our taper leading into the previous meet,” Dion said via email. “We were able to get a lot of folks some good preparation heading into the meet and it allowed most people to come away with some of their best times.”

Proud of the work she has put in, Showalter feels prepared for the competition.

“I am excited to make it to regionals and am glad that all the hard work is paying off,” Showalter said via text. “I have been to regionals and state the past 3 years and hope to advance to state again this year.”

Both athletes have been working to prepare for the challenges they will face this weekend, hoping to see positive results.

“Mallory and Maria have been training over the past two weeks,” Dion said. “Both girls have a great opportunity to advance to state.”

Being the only two from the team advancing, the teammates are determined to encourage each other to continue pushing themselves harder.

“It [was tough] at the beginning but then it kind of made us want to try harder because we are that small team that no one expects to be better,” Oushalkas said. “However, Mallory and I definitely push each other even though we are not in the same events. We still check up on each other to make sure we really work hard instead of slacking off just the two of us.”

Determined not having others to push them in practice, the teammates are eager to push forward and show off what they can do.

“It’s definitely not as fun as it was last year just because the family sense isn’t really there and it’s hard to have a nice big family on a team when there’s only like six of us,” Oushalkas said. “It definitely makes us look like a [weaker] swim team because it looks like we are losing by about 100 points when really it is just six girls versus roughly 15 girls.”

“I wish we had more people on the swim team this year,” Showalter said. “But Coach Dion has helped us become closer as a team and has really done a great job under tough circumstances.”