By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor

NORTH SHELBY – The Westminster School at Oak Mountain swim team competed in its first ever regular season swim meet on Sept. 8 against three teams from the North Alabama League; Gadsden City, Hazel Green and Cullman. Westminster head coach Dawn Todd has been coaching in the Birmingham area for the last 10 years with USA Swimming year-round clubs and the JSSC summer league. The allure of developing a new program was what convinced her to take the job at Westminster.

“I’m always up for trying something new,” Todd said in a Sept. 10 phone interview. “Developing a program is something I kind of like doing. Some of the swimmers I already knew from club swimming, which was a big draw for me. This is kind of a different format, and that really appealed to me.”

In the Birmingham area, traditionally high school swim teams have taken a backseat to club swimming. Usually, high school swimmers stay with their club teams all through the fall before competing in the sectional and state meets with their schools in the weekends directly after Thanksgiving.

“Birmingham high school teams are kind of strange, compared to other places,” Todd said. “They don’t really practice together. This Westminster team is kind of interesting because they work out as a team. Julie Raines (the school sponsor) and the people at the school put a lot of legwork into this.”

The Knights technically had a team a year ago, bringing eight swimmers to the sectional meet. This year, the team has doubled in size to 16 swimmers, ranging in age from seventh graders to seniors in high school.

Todd said two swimmers who are leading the way for Westminster this year are Katelyn Murdock and Matthew Moore, a pair of juniors. Both are swimmers capable of posting strong times in a number of events, according to Todd.

With new projects, accurate and manageable expectations can be tough to land on. Todd said her expectations for this group is to get as many kids to qualify for the sectional and state meet as possible, but the primary goal is to make this an outlet where her swimmers can enjoy themselves.

“We want to see how many people we can qualify for sectionals and state,” Todd said. “But our underlying goal to all of that is to let them have fun and build camaraderie and just allow them to have a good time.”