CBS 58's Hometown Athlete: Schroeder Swim powers to combined national championship
CBS 58 MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) -- Boys and girls swim. Combined for a common goal.
"The last three years of this meet? We had gotten runner-up," Anne Dickinson says. "So, I think we knew that we were going to be up there in the standings. And it was really about coming together as a team because we swim the best when we're having fun."
The Schroeder swim team/YMCA of Metropolitan Milwaukee won a combined national title. As the banner shows, for the first time in nearly 3 decades.
"This was the first time since 1997, that the program won," Co-Coach Chandler Lewis says. "We had numerous banners on the ceiling here and for a long time it was the team's goal."
"From all the alumni and the coaches that had come before us," Co-Coach Caleb Hernday says. "To our athletes and families we have right now. To our entire staff. And we've just kind of done it the right way with our staff and with our athletes and families teaching life skills and character development through the Schroeder way."
For this program? It's in their competitive DNA.
"Like our core values on the wall over there is like be great," Dawson Walters says. "Act with integrity. Team first. Like and expect success. So we like take those into account."
"Pressure's a privilege," Hernday says. "Everyone was kind of freaking out. I was as well. But man we were all like this is what it's all about. There's only 60, 70 people in the building that can say they kind of felt what we felt in that moment. Between us and the other team that we were racing."
"We always preach the values of the Schroeder way," Anne Dickinson says. "And ever since I was a kid? I could really see it coming together with the leadership that we had. Something special was really happening so I'm glad that it finally came together this year. My last year of swim."
"Like, it's a legacy program," Walters says. "And like I want to be a part of it. And it's, over the past year like I've had, I've made the best friends and the coaches. Like, have been the best mentors to me. I've just improved so much."
And now the nation knows...
"I'm biased, I think we have best staff, families and community in the state of Wisconsin. In the Midwest and in the country," Hernday says.
