On Tuesday, October 5th, two records from the last CHS boys swim and dive team to win conference championships fell spectacularly during a meet against the Pattonville Pirates. Both of these records, in freestyle events were broken by junior Graham Zucker.
The 2021 season is Zucker’s first year back on the CHS team, after focusing on club swim for his sophomore season. “This season has been really great. Team morale has been really great, everybody’s doing their job at practice,” said Zucker. However, he has years of club swimming experience with the CSP Tideriders, where he trains with their Elite training group, which practices six days a week, sometimes twice per day.
Despite his relatively new reappearance on the CHS team, Zucker speaks highly of his high school coaches. “I really love Coach Laux, he’s been a great addition. And of course I love Coach Darion. He’s always fun and a good sport around the pool. He gives great advice and instructions,” said Zucker.
The 50 yard freestyle is the 4th event in any high school swim meet. Zucker broke the school record, previously held by Ben Evra with a time of 22.16 seconds. After some congratulations, watching his brother, Henry, dive and the 100 yard butterfly, Zucker was ready to race once again. Zucker broke the school and Center of Clayton pool records in the 100 yard freestyle. Both of these records were previously held by Koji Barette. In this race, Zucker dropped over one second from his previous fastest time and swam a time of 47.35 seconds.
“I feel really good [about breaking the records]. It was a pretty good swim in the 100 free and the 50 freestyle wasn’t perfect but I got the job done. So still lots to work on but great swims,” said Zucker.
