With the season’s only home meet now over, the Bakersfield College swim teams have spent the last two weeks preparing for the Western State Conference Championships.

For the last couple of weeks, coach Matt Moon has been letting the team practice a little more freely, at least for the beginning of practice.

“I’ve been letting them kind of do their own 20-minute meet warm up. They kind of play around with what works best for them to get them ready to get up and race,” said Moon.

Moon said that he has been focusing on dives for explosiveness off the starts, and little details, like keeping the swimmers focused on their events and specific strokes. Moon said he has been conditioning the sprinters with bungee training. Distance swimmers have been putting in more yards in the pool to help maintain their base.

But one of the main things of the tapering training process is rest and health.

“The big part about tapering is rest. Trying to get them to stay hydrated, rest, and let their bodies recover from the season, then go out there and hit it at the peak,” said Moon.

At this time, there are only three swimmers, one male and two female, who currently hold top 16 times in the state in their events, but the conference championships give swimmers another chance to qualify for state competition. Erik Wood has been strong all year and as of today he is the only male with a top 16 time. Wood has been swimming the 200-meter IM, 100 butterfly and 200 butterfly.

On the women’s side, Sara Klang and Bri Smith are both holding top 16 times.

Moon said Klang is looking solid. Klang is in the top 16 for 200 freestyle and the 500 freestyle and just short in the 100 freestyle. Smith is in the top 16 for the 100 and 200 breaststroke.

The WSC Championships will be held April 21-23 at Cuesta College in San Luis Obispo.

Moon is looking forward to traveling to Cuesta for the championships and is excited to see the enjoyment on the swimmers’ faces.

“My favorite thing is seeing the enjoyment, all the happy faces on them and their expressions … I think I get more joy out of seeing my athletes perform their best than I ever did, whenever I had my best time and looked up at the clock,” said Moon. “To see all the hard work pay off, I think that is my favorite thing about conference is seeing that joy on their face after they cashed in the check; all that hard work paid off.”