SWAMPSCOTT — When Matthew Brown and his fellow seniors first joined the Swampscott swim team, winning meets wasn’t something that came around very often for the Big Blue.
“It’s such a weird thing to look back now,” Brown said. “I remember coming in as a freshman, the team was made up of 12 people and they were coming off a season with zero wins.”
But that lack of success didn’t stop Swampscott from becoming a close-knit group and eventually through that bond, the wins started to come in more and more over the years.
“It helped build a team bond that was built more around friendship and the closeness of the team than winning at first,” Brown said. “Our class almost doubled the size of the team when it came in. Over the years, the wins started to pile up and it started from the team becoming so close.”
Flash forward to this past season and the Big Blue have literally flipped the script, putting the finishing touches on a perfect 7-0 season this month. It was quite the season to accomplish the feat as well, with COVID guidelines making all of the season’s meets virtual. That meant no competition in the pool’s next lane, which brings a whole new dynamic to the sport.
“It falls a lot on the captains to get everybody excited and motivated,” first-year Swampscott coach Ashley Vieira said. “It can be challenging but you have to get everybody pumped up for their races either way.”
With Vieira new to the program, her nine seniors became the backbone of the team and that started at the top with Swampscott’s senior co-captains Brown and Elizabeth Dokina.
“They have both been great,” Vieira said. “A lot of it is pumping kids up to swim when they’re not swimming next to a competitor. With the guidelines, we were split into two groups a lot of the time and making the team feel like a team was important.”
Vieira and Brown ended up going above and beyond in that category and created a winning culture, even if the bottom line was that they were glad to be swimming at all in the middle of a pandemic.
“It was a lot harder to feel like a team this year,” Dokina said. “I was just so grateful to get in the pool and swim. I’ve gained a lot of respect for the sport this past year and we all would’ve been so happy regardless of the winning.
“Matt and I had to do a lot of shared leading throughout the season to make sure there was still team spirit,” Dokina added. “The meets weren’t as exciting with the team split up, but we still had to have our heads in the game. That was difficult this year but the team was up for it.”
One of the year’s biggest highlights was the Big Blue’s annual matchup with town rival, Marblehead. For the first time in more than a decade Swampscott came out on top over the Magicians, 108-77. As exciting as the win was, finding out the final results was a journey in itself.
“Our season had started later than Marblehead’s,” Vieira said. “So Marblehead actually swam the meet and held onto their results for a whole month. When we finally swam our half, we didn’t find out we won until later that afternoon.”
In a year filled with best times being topped and success for Swampscott that win was special. From the outside looking in it may seem like revenge on an old rival, but for the Big Blue it meant a little more.
“I don’t think it was really about beating a rival,” Brown said. “We’re friends with a lot of them. We see them all the time. I think for me it was about how we were able to grow over the years. After I heard the results, I thought back to our first ever win in general a few years back. It was about the journey for us. Being able to come out on top this year was a surreal feeling.”
And this year isn’t the end for Brown and Dokina. Both Swampscott captains are set to continue competing in the pool at the college level. Brown, who did it all for the Big Blue from the 500 freestyle to the 200 individual medley will be at Trinity College in Hartford, Conn. next year while Dokina, who particularly excels in the breaststroke, is committed to Bucknell University in Lewisburg, Penn.
“The whole recruiting process was definitely extra stressful,” Dokina said. “But knowing Bucknell was interested in me from the beginning to the end helped the choice. I never got the full, in-person tour but talking to the coaches and some of the swimmers there made it seem welcoming.”
“I think when I was looking at colleges, I was unsure what I was looking for exactly,” Brown said. “But I narrowed it down and once I went (to Trinity), I just knew. The campus and people opened me up to the idea and then the coaches and members of the team I spoke to helped me make it that much easier of a decision.”
Dan Kane can be reached at [email protected].
