Arlington School & Family Magazine March/April 2018 | Page 12

Seguin’s Swimming Success
By Kenneth Perkins
Gerald H. wasn’t much of a swimmer
when he entered Seguin High School as
a freshman.
Actually, that’s the kind way to put it.
Gerald couldn’t swim at all.
Standing up in the water was fine.
Anything rising above his waist sent
him into a sheer panic.
So imagine his astonishment when
Seguin swim coach Alex Weidemann
invited Gerald to join the Cougars swim
team.
“The first thing I though was, ‘Well, I
could, but I’d probably drown,’” Gerald
said, laughing at his own comment. “But
I was flattered. I couldn’t believe he
would ask me in the first place. I asked
my mother, and she said fine, as long as
it didn’t interfere with my school work.”
What Gerald didn’t know was that,
at the time, Weidemann had so few
swimmers on the team that he was
asking pretty much everyone.
Fast-forward three years. Seguin was in
sixth place during the Boys’ 4x50-yard
medley relay at the regional meet with
Gerald as anchor. He dove into the pool,
catching one swimmer and then another
and another until he could see the top two.
Remember: 50 yards is just to the end of
the pool and back. Not a lot of time to
catch anyone, let alone four swimmers.
“I was just focused on getting the guy I
saw next to me,” Gerald said. “Then after
I passed him, there was another one.”
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Gerald passed one more swimmer
before running out of time, giving
Seguin a second-place finish and a trip
to the UIL Class 5A State Swim Meet
at the University of Texas at Austin. At
state, the relay went into the finals as the
22nd seed and finished 20th with their
second-fastest time of the season.
The boy who couldn’t swim is now
considered, by the coach who persuaded
him, “lightning quick in the water.”
Gerald and his teammates Kolby L.
(backstroke), Timothy H. (breaststroke)
and DJ H. (butterfly) are the first-ever
student-athletes from Seguin to qualify
for the state swim meet.
“We’ve never done this before,” said
Weidemann, who was hired in 2012,
inheriting a four-member swim team,
which explains Weidemann’s recruiting
method of asking any student who
walked by him during scheduling day to
join the team. “That shows why I am so
proud of what these kids accomplished.”
D.J. also qualified in the 500-yard
freestyle event, another first for Seguin
since no Cougars swimmer has ever
qualified in an individual race. He
finished 13th in the state, yet another
record-breaking distinction.
Seguin was the only AISD school to
send state qualifiers to Austin.
“The boys had a lot of fun,”
Weidemann said of the state finals trip.
“They sang karaoke the whole way
down to Austin and told jokes. They
laughed for two-straight days, and so
did I. I had a lot of fun seeing them
on the University of Texas pool deck
representing AISD and Seguin.”
For the Cougars, the success is
a notable testament to athletic
coaching and ingenuity on the part of
Weidemann, and swimmers who bought
into his workout program.
Weidemann said the demographics at
Seguin are such that not a lot of elite
swimmers enroll there - only a few
of them have experience at the swim
club level. Of the relay members, two
of them just started swimming their
freshman year.
Knowing this, Weidemann actually makes
it a practice to establish a relationship
with the feeder junior high schools to talk
about swimming and drum up interest
before they get to Seguin.
His coaching philosophy is quite simple:
anyone can swim as long as they put in
the time and effort.
“I knew when I first arrived that
building a team would take some work,”
Weidemann said. “Every freshman and
sophomore I saw during schedule pick
up, I would just ask, ‘Hey you have a
sport? If not, join swimming!’”
All of the seniors are headed to college.
DJ signed with Henderson State
University in Arkansas, and Timothy,
ranked fifth in his senior class, will study
electrical engineering at Georgia Tech.
As for the speedster Gerald, he’ll head to
college, but he’s not yet sure if he’ll swim.
Weidemann worked with his star for speed
in the freestyle stroke when it was clear
that trying to conquer various swims, such
as backstroke or butterfly, would have
been too difficult for the time they had.
“I struggled mightily my first two years
trying to learn all of that,” Gerald said.
Call it another coaching triumph for
Weidemann, who said for all of his
swimmer’s “lightning quickness,” there’s
one basic pool maneuver he still has yet to
master.
“He still can’t float,” said Weidemann,
laughing.