Hibbing swimmers look to the future

HIBBING—As the 2024 high school girls swimming season gets off the ground, Hibbing coach Mike Veneziano has a whole new vision of his squad.

That’s because Veneziano never looks to the past, he looks forward to the future, and this season is no exception.

According to Veneziano, every team, every year is unique unto itself.

“Even if you get a majority of your athletes back and you didn’t lose much to graduation, the complexion of the team always changes,” Veneziano said. “One of the important jobs as a coach is to understand the makeup of the team and try to adapt what you’re going for that specific team.

“I like what I’m seeing so far.”

How does Veneziano go about doing that?

“It’s a matter of creating some ground rules as to how we operate, how we train, how we explain things, what you need to be focused on, what you need to stop focusing on,” Veneziano said. “We have to build a culture of what we want to do around here.

“The expectations are clear. We’ve effectively communicated that. You use that as a framework to do the training and get better. Right now, the thing I’ve been trying to sell to everybody is not looking at how much work we’re doing, but how much improvement we accomplish.”

Veneziano doesn’t want his girls to worry about the amount of work they’re doing.

“Let’s worry about that work that we did, and what did it do for us?” Veneziano said. “In that sense, it’s a much happier mind frame, especially when the drudgery of a season starts dragging on.

“If you can train yourself to view things from that perspective now, it makes the harder parts of the season better and more adaptable.”

That will be good for a younger team because Veneziano only has one senior swimmer, Ginny Sandness.

The junior class consists of Maggie Cary, Raini Gibson, Alayna Schlecht and Riley St. George.

The sophomores are Gianna Fatticci, Lizzy Haupt, Julia Plombon and Naomi Ronning.

“What I like about this specific team now is that they’re doing a good job with that,” Veneziano said. “They’re relatively young. From one season to the next, the earth has orbited the sun one full revolution.

“You’re different because of the stage of life they’re at. You’ve grown physically and mentally. You’re not the same person that was here last year. You’ve changed because you’ve grown up. Because of that, we have to adapt to the way you’ve changed. I’ve seen a lot of these kids competitively grow up in one year. That’s an exciting thing for us.”

The freshmen include Jacki Hiltner, Gretchn Hoertsch and Nya Lee.

There is one other senior, diver Sylvie Wetzel.

“The two seniors we have are providing some good leadership,” Veneziano said. “We also realize that you can’t rely on a couple of people to do all of the leadership. It’s a cooperative effort.

“You’re not doing your job as a member of the team if there’s only one or two people, including coaches and captains, telling you what’s going on, and you’re very passive as to what you’re chiming in.”

There will be a group dynamic in leadership.

“The most critical thing we could have going for us is that all of us are going to struggle at some point,” Veneziano said. “When you have several people trying to help you, you don’t have to say the catch phrase, ‘I’ve got your back.’

“You can feel you’re being supported. That goes a long way because someday, it’s going to be your turn to be supported. Where are those people? If they’re there, good things happen. If they’re not, things don’t go so well.”

As far as the events go, Gibson was the lone Hibbing swimmer to advance to state last year in the 100 butterfly.

She placed ninth in the event.

Other than that, Veneziano shouldn’t have an issue filling the other events.

“We’ve got some returning underclassmen in the butterfly,” Veneziano said. “There’s Raini Gibson, but we also have Riley St. George, who is right there. The butterfly is going to become one of our strongest events.

“The butterfly gets the reputation of being the most difficult stroke, which it is until you understand the technique and mechanics of it. That makes it a lot easier. We have a lot of pretty good swimmers in the butterfly, but you can take that idea and concept and translate it into a lot of the other strokes and distances. If you can take what is perceived to be the most difficult stroke, break it down and make it that much better, you can do that with every stroke.”

Veneziano did say that the rest of his lineup is wide open.

“Lineups tend to start taking care of themselves, and people will start fitting into the framework of what you need,” he said. “Sometimes, out of necessity, we build an athlete to fill that role.

“There’s a lot of kids on this team that don’t have a specific role right now, but there’s a lot of options for them. Everybody needs to keep an open mind and be willing to experiment. It might not seem like it’s your thing to do, but it might be your thing to do. This team will take some time to build. It’s going to be a process. It’s going to take some patience, but the prognosis is we have the tools to do that.”

In the diving department, joining Wetzel will be junior Mallary Seykora and sophomore Evie Renskers.

Renskers advanced to state last year, but an injury kept her from competing there.

“Diving will be incredibly strong for us,” Veneziano said. “We’ve got a good crew of divers, led by our diving coach Sara Merfeld.

“There’s a lot of good things that started happening last year, where there’s excitement and joy around the diving board. That makes what they do on a daily basis more enjoyable to do. That’s an attitude that is catchy. It translates into the quality of work you do is always better when you’re a happy person.”

Veneziano expects Mesabi East to be at the top of the heap this season, but as to where his team finishes, that remains to be seen.

“It depends on how you want to measure your success,” Veneziano said. “Right now, I have the raw material to make myself a good team. It’s trying to figure out how to develop that talent. This season has a lot of possibilities, things I can’t see right now.

“They will show up in their own time. The main thing is that every day are we improving? Is the work we’re doing getting us better? That is going to be a key to the entire season. We’ve got that going for us.”