Bishop McNamara bringing back boys, girls swimming programs

The Fightin’ Irish will be hitting the pool for the first time since 2012 this fall and winter.

Bishop McNamara is adding boys and girls swimming back to its slate of offered sports after a form distributed among students showed that swimming was generating some interest.

Athletic director Aaron Hamilton said that this interest, combined with the relative ease of starting up a swimming program compared with other sports, made it evident that it was time to bring swimming back, with the girls season starting this fall and the boys season to follow in the winter.

“We took those results from that survey and we had a rather large interest in it, for boys and girls both,” he said. “We thought, ‘This is something we can get going right away.’ Obviously, without a pool, we were looking for some place to go and practice, the logistics part of it.

“But we knew that it would be something that would be a little easier to get started as opposed to a girls flag football team, where there’s equipment and things like that involved and a little more cost to start.”

The pool at the Kankakee Area YMCA is shaping up to be the practice space for Bishop McNamara’s swimmers. Hosting competitions will not be something on the program’s radar for likely a couple of seasons, however.

“We want to get our feet wet, no pun intended there, to see where we’re going with things, how the sport works and make sure we as a school understand everything,” Hamilton said. “When we host something, we want to make sure it’s top notch and well done, and it takes a couple years to learn from that.”

Even without home dates to set up, Hamilton said the scheduling process has been the toughest part of starting up the program so far.

“We’re a little late in the game for swimming, as far as what teams have already scheduled,” he said. “You’re kind of at the mercy of some schools letting you in, and you’re at the mercy of some schools that just don’t have space for you.”

To Hamilton’s knowledge, a full-fledged swim team has not been a part of Bishop McNamara’s history, but the school has had individual swimmers, both boys and girls, compete in the past.

A few individual swimmers is all that will encompass the new program, at least for a while as the program is set up and more interest is generated among the student body.

“We’re hoping that we can make this a full team in the future as it gets more popular with our students,” Hamilton said. “We’re going to start small with whichever individuals want to compete, work our way from there and build the program.”

Another major step for Bishop McNamara’s swim teams is attaching head coaches. Hamilton said no coaches are in place yet, but since he knows of several faculty members that either have experience swimming themselves or have children who swim, he expects to be able to find coaches relatively quickly.

Overall, Hamilton said he and the rest of the athletic department are just glad to be able to offer another sport for their athletes.

“We’re excited about adding a new program to Bishop McNamara athletics and more opportunities for our kids to get to compete at the IHSA level,” Hamilton said. “Hopefully the future for us will be adding more sports to our athletic department.”