Call it a youth movement, but the Albert Lea girls’ swimming and diving team is turning in nearly the same times in the two relays that went to state last year with a younger cast.

The freshmen in turn have responded and become contributors the team can rely on from meet to meet.

“We expected a lot out of them at the beginning of the year,” Tigers head coach Jon Schmitz said. “We’ve expected them to pick it up and be our point earners.”

It’s been long hours and a steep learning curve both in and out of the pool. With morning practices beginning at 5:45 a.m. on Mondays and Wednesdays, since the second week of school up until the conference meet two weeks ago, and the increased courseload of school the freshmen have plenty on their plate.

“They’ve had a lot of responsibility all at once,” Schmitz said. “Some of them were kind of down in the dumps because they were tired and they had a lot of studies to do. Not only that, they were training harder, they were studying harder, they were expected to score points for us.”

Schmitz will look to freshmen Galen Schulz, Bria Schreiber and Morgan Field once again Wednesday as Albert Lea heads to the preliminaries of the Section 1A meet in Austin.

“We have three freshmen that have a legitimate chance at the state meet,” Schmitz said. “The reason is, we just expected that out of them.”

Schreiber, who swims the 100-yard breaststroke, and Schulz, who swims the 100 free and 50 free, earned all-conference honors after the conference meet. Schreiber made state cut times and Schulz came four-tenths of a second shy. Both will try to make those times this week in the section finals.

Both have kept it light leading up to the section meet even though both have a strong chance to advance to state in their individual event.

“If we make it to state we get to bleach our coach’s (assistant coach Erik Johnson) hair,” Schulz said. “That’s really truly our motivation.”

All kidding aside, making the cut times is good sign for the Tigers because the top two swimmers advance to the state meet in each event, plus those that swim under the cut time.

At the Big Nine Conference meet a handful of Albert Lea swimmers were at or near state cut times. The Tigers placed seventh and were the highest placing Class A team at the meet. Albert Lea met five state cut times as well. The Tigers could send as many as seven events to the state meet.

“We’re really pleased, we think we can go a lot faster too,” Schmitz said. “We were on a lot of outside lanes which were filled with waves at the conference meet. Even though the pool was exceptional we had to work for those times.”

The two captains, juniors Amanda Walters and Gracie Thomas, were once in the same position as the three freshmen and now are the leaders of the team. Both have had exceptional seasons in the pool.

Walters finished third at the conference meet in the 100 free and plans for a trip to state.

She is testing new waters this season as she made the shift from the backstroke events and into the freestyle. Walters made the state meet in the backstroke but made the move to freestyle just recently.

“Her sprint is just phenomenal this year,” Schmitz said. “Her 100 free is a 54.89, that’s a really tough time. She could be a finalist at state easily with that time.”

That’s what Walters has wanted since the end of last season when she narrowly missed out on a medal at state, finishing ninth in the 100 back.

“In the past it’s kind of been my event,” Walters said of the backstroke. “At first I was kind of worried whether I would get to where I wanted to be, but it’s worked out really well.”

She enters the section meet with the No. 1 seed time in the event. Walter also swims the 50 free and seeded third.

Albert Lea is looking to send the 200-yard medley relay and the 200 free relay to state just like it did a year ago.

Walters, Schulz, Thomas and sophomore Amy Horejsi make up the 200 medley relay, which posted a time of 1:55.75 at the conference meet, two seconds better than the state cut time and right on pace with that of last year’s team that posted a 1:55.47 at the state meet. Last year’s team featured a junior and a senior and have been replaced by Horejsi and Schulz.

“That’s really good improvement for us as a team because the relays that we had last year, we had for almost three years,” Walters said.

The 200 free relay didn’t make a state cut time, but the team of Schulz, Walters, Horejsi and Schreiber were just one-tenth of a second back of the cut time with their time of 1:43.93.

There has some mixing and matching going on with the team and events. Horejsi has been inserted into the butterfly leg of the 200 medley relay and has done so for a month.

“This team can be just as fast,” Schmitz said. “The first two leadouts are the same as last year. They’re both much stronger swimmers than they were last year. The butterfly, Amy Horejsi is doing a great job and she’s improving at every meet. Galen is doing a super job in that anchor leg. She’s probably better than anybody we had last year in that anchor leg.”

The Tigers are looking particularly strong in the 100 breaststroke as well. Albert Lea enters with three swimmers in the top five for seed times.

Schreiber just started swimming the breaststroke three meets ago and holds the No. 1 seed time with a 1:12.16. Thomas has the second best time with 1:12.37. Field is seeded No. 4 with her time of 1:14.30.

The divers have been an added bonus for Schmitz this season as the numbers have increased. Katie Walechka made the conference finals has a chance to do the same at the section meet.

Filling the voids of upperclassmen hasn’t been much of a problem this year for Schmitz.

“My freshman group has been an outstanding group,” Schmitz said. “Before they weren’t expected to score, they could let other people do that job. We were expecting them to go out and race and be very competitive. That was a big change and they’ve managed to do that. They made a breakthrough where right now it was second nature.”