Norwin High School Varsity Swim’s season dives head first into the 2024-25 swim season. First-year head coach Katherine Bernardi has her team putting in 110% effort, despite some insuperable issues holding the team back.
The Knight swimmers look to train hard and improve times all season in preparation for Championship Meets later in the season including Westmoreland County Championships and WPIAL Championships at the University of Pittsburgh at the end of February.
Early in the season on December 3rd, both the Boys and Girls teams opened their seasons with a meet in Gateway. The Girls Swim team came just short, losing 90-91, with the Boys Swim team also losing 104-70. In their second match, another away meet in Central Catholic, the girls secured their first win of the season 80-69, while the boys fell to 0-2 with an 87-76 loss. Then, the teams had their first home meet against Elizabeth Forward on Monday, Dec. 16. The boys and girls teams achieved a home victory, with the boys winning 85-79 and the girls winning 92-75.
Both teams has brought light to an issue Norwin’s swim program faces when it comes to their chances in meets. The team does not have a diving program, and therefore, automatically forfeits the diving points that other schools earn by having divers present at meets. Additionally, due to lingering issues caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Norwin swim’s feeder program, Norwin Aqua Club, has been struggling with numbers and membership enrollments.
These struggles for the Aqua Club have left the team in a rough spot when it comes to recruiting swimmers. Due to these factors, Norwin lacks the same amount of swimmers as their opponents in many of their meets, which leads to the team being at an immediate disadvantage. Coach Bernardi hopes that the team will be able to ignore these roadblocks.
“Our goal is twofold- we’re trying to get as many of our swimmers to make WPIAL cuts as we can, and we’re trying to make teams nervous,” said Bernardi.
Regarding the team’s schedule, the Norwin swimmers are over half way through the season and have four more meets remaining before WPIALs. Curently, the Lady Knight Swimmers are 3-3 overall and the Boys Swimmers are 2-4 overall.
As of January 29th, six students have made the time in their event needed to qualify for individual WPIAL competition. These students include: Tyler Turgeon, Aiden Samuels, Liam Samuels, Amber Klingensmith, Hanna Klingensmith, and Kismet Juart. On top of these six students, sophomore Preston Montag achieved a :06 time drop in the WCCA Championship Meet, placing him only 0.16 seconds away from making a WPIAL cut.
On January 25th, both the boys and girls teams traveled to Derry for the Westmoreland County Coaches Association Championships. Both teams performed well. The Boys finished 5th overall with 232 pts, about 100 pts away from WPIAL powerhouse Franklin Regional. The Girls finished 6th overall with 199.5 pts, while Greater Latrobe won the County Title.
The Boys placed Top 5 in six of their events. Senior standout Tyler Turgeon placed first in the 100-meter backstroke with a time of 51.82.
“We cheer for each other on all of our events,” said senior swimmer Tyler Turgeon, “congratulate people no matter how they swim, and we always have fun after the meet. We go out to get food often.”
Turgeon is a long-tenured member of the Norwin Swim team, and is one of their yearly top performers, qualifying for WPIAL competition in multiple events last season. Although swimming is technically an individual sport, Norwin’s team makes a serious effort to stay as unified as possible.
On the girls side, four swimmers earned individual medals, and sophomore Amber Klingensmith broke the school record time of :57.30, originally set in the 1980’s, in the 100-meter fly. Hannah Klingensmith scored 2nd in the 200 meter freestyle with a time of 1:58.35, as well as three additional medal finishes in other individual events.
“Even though we’re a fairly small team, I think we have a very, very strong team this year and I think we’re gonna see a lot of people getting best times in pretty much everything and do better than we ever have,” said Turgeon.
