The University of Idaho Argonaut

Senior University of Idaho swimmers completed their last regular season meet Saturday, in a 139-49 loss to Washington State University, bringing the team to an overall 2-11 record.
It was the team’s fourth loss to WSU this year.

Despite the loss, the meet was a time of celebration for seniors, who are scheduled to swim their final meet Feb. 20- 23 in the WAC swimming and diving championships.
The nine seniors on the team call themselves family after becoming the first class to go through the ranks from freshmen to senior on the UI swim team since the team was reinstated in 2003.

“On the deck we have each others’ backs,” swimmer Adriana Quirke said.
From the start, coach Tom Jager said that the swimmers didn’t have to be friends, but they did have to be teammates, Quirke said.

“We trained twice a day — we ate together every day,” Quirke said, speaking of the team’s early years.
After spending time working together in practice and being together for meals, the swimmers on the team became a group of friends.

“From the beginning we were new and scared,” Quirke said.
Jager mainly recruited from the states of Washington and Oregon. As a result, five of the seniors come from Oregon, three from Washington, and one from Montana.

“I never imagined racing alongside all the girls I grew up racing against when I was younger,” Quirke said.
With all the swimmers coming from around the same area, many swimmers knew or recognized some new teammates right away.

“A lot of us knew each other. A lot of us were from Oregon. We had some sort of idea who each other were,” swimmer Kacie Hogan said.
The swimmers were drawn together through shared experiences.

“Being the first at everything was a big thing for us and helped pull us together,” swimmer Sara Peterson said.
Since the seniors, then freshmen, didn’t have upper-class team leaders to guide the way, or established traditions to follow, they created team traditions and values of their own.

“When you look at it now, time went quickly,” Jager said. “There were some values as Vandal swimmers we wanted to establish. This group lived it; they believed it. These guys would go through a wall for each other.”