By ADAM STEWART

Staff writer

A pair of banners celebrating Marion swim team’s 2009 and 2010 Mid Kansas Swim League championships hang in USD 408 Sports and Aquatics Center.

“It’s a good, healthy activity, and the kids like it,” co-head-coach Susan Hall said. “That’s why they keep coming back.”

Some swimmers like the sport so much that they also swim competitively in the winter. One such swimmer is 9-year-old Luke Lanning. He is in his fourth year as a member of Marion swim team, and for the past two winters he has swam for the Newton Nitros.

“It builds me up, makes me stronger and a better swimmer,” Luke said. “I think it helps me be a better athlete and more competitive.”

Luke spends a lot of his free time competing in a variety of sports, including soccer, baseball, wrestling, basketball, and flag football.

“We’re out at a ball field every night on a weekend,” Luke said.

On the swim team, he uses all of the strokes — freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke, and butterfly — but butterfly is his favorite because of the challenge it presents.

“That’s one of the hardest ones, I think,” Luke said.

Because he advanced from the 8-and-younger division this year, he will be swimming longer races. However, his time swimming in Newton has prepared him for that. While swimmers in the 8-and-younger division of the summer league swim primarily 25-meter races, in the winter league he mostly swam 50-meter races, he said.

“The Newton one, they push you a lot harder,” Luke said.

If Marion swim team wins another league championship, Luke will likely play a major role. He won most of his races in 2010, co-head-coach Deanna Thierolf said Friday. Despite his youth, Luke swims like a high school swimmer, the coaches said.

In addition to young swimmers like Luke, Marion swim team has many high school swimmers. Briana Hall, who will be a junior in the fall, started swimming competitively as a first-grader.

“I’ve just really enjoyed it,” Briana said. “It’s fun in the summer to stay active. I love the sport.”

One summer she joined a swim team in Wichita because Marion lacked a pool while USD 408 Sports and Aquatics Center was under construction. The presence of the indoor aquatics center provides two significant advantages for swimmers, she said: the ability to swim in all seasons and the ability to stay warm between races. With an outdoor pool, swimmers can get cold standing in the wind, especially in the morning.

The team has four triangular meets before the league meet, and the first meet was Saturday at Council Grove. The league meet is scheduled for July 9 in Lindsborg.