photo by: David Rodish/Journal-World

Free State's Anderson Bateman swims his portion of the 400-yard freestyle relay in a swim and dive meet at the Lawrence Indoor Aquatic Center on Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026, in Lawrence.

Free State coach Janna Skinner was unsure of how the boys swim and dive team would swim on Jan. 9 at a meet in Lenexa. Coming off a winter break and with a young team, rust was a possibility for the Firebirds.

Instead, the Firebirds swam hard, impressing their coach. The following week, they did it again at home in a slower pool.

The back-to-back results are a confidence boost to the Free State team as the swim and dive season enters its final month. Despite the youth and number of young swimmers stepping into bigger roles on relays, the Firebirds have shown themselves to be a competitive team.

“I think mentally it helps our guys know that those times at (Shawnee Mission School District Aquatic Center) were not a fluke, that we are making those gains,” Skinner said. “We’re ready to approach championship season when we start backing off on the yards and they feel a lot fresher.”

In the home swim meet, senior Ewan Campbell beat his 100-yard backstroke time that he set at the Jan. 9 meet by 0.42 seconds. Junior Anderson Bateman was 0.21 seconds away from besting his time at the Shawnee Mission meet, and he’s already as fast as he was during the state meet last year, even without any taper. The team’s three relays shined at the Shawnee Mission meet, and the Firebirds were able to keep their relay times close when back in Lawrence, showing that those relay teams are going the right way.

“Our relays are getting up there,” Campbell said. “We’re going to score better at state, we’re going to place better at state this year, despite the fact that we thought this year’s team would be gutted with the amount of seniors that graduated last year. So I think we’re doing great.”

The Firebirds lost a number of really good seniors from last year’s team. Campbell said that the expectations were that this may be a rebuilding year after so many leading swimmers graduated. But that hasn’t been the case for Free State. The Firebirds have shown they’ve got a lot of strong swimmers who can show out in February.

“I feel like we’ve already rebuilt the team to a point where we’re going to do better this year anyway,” Campbell said. “We got some new freshmen who are fast – when they’re seniors they’re going to be dominant. Everyone has stepped their game up.”

The confidence boost from the results come at an opportune time. Swim and dive is a high turnover sport — it can be hard to keep people engaged and showing up to practices when the season gets into the dog days. Practices can feel repetitive and challenging, and swimmers put in hours of work to shave mere seconds of time.

So to see the results pay off for the Firebirds like they have in the last two weeks is important. Not just because it’s a challenging sport, or even because they have a young team, but to see the team succeed and cut time at this stage in the year shows that they can outperform their own expectations both individually and as a unit.

“I think they’re realizing, ‘Oh, we can do this,'” Skinner said. “…A lot of our guys are coming out (to swim) because our team is pretty positive to be around, and they love each other. They love cheering for each other, and so that atmosphere is helping.”

Now, the Firebirds just have to keep at it, keep pushing each other and finish strong.

“It’s like the home stretch, that last 25 yards of any race you’re doing,” Bateman said. “The end is in sight. I think we’re going to gun it down and be able to hit state at our peak performance.”