Water world

By Shane Mettlen

Published: July 8, 2008

Club swimming is often a numbers game, and the Country Club of Culpeper Barracudas have been seeing their numbers — and their fortunes — rise.

The Barracudas hosted the Orange Otters at the Country Club pool Tuesday night, and new coach Abby Harris had a squad of 38 swimmers competing for the Barracudas, which in most recent years has been way outnumbered by other area clubs. Though the Otters still had more entries in most races than the Cudas, the gap is shrinking and the results show it.

Last week the Barracudas topped 400 points in a single meet for the first time in club history.

“I guess the numbers had been down some at the Country Club, but it’s going back up again,” Harris said. “I think kids see swimmers from Culpeper go through that have had success and they want to swim too.”

Harris, who is also the swim coach at Culpeper County High School, said she’s enjoying her first summer as a club swimming coach. Working with kids ages six and under can be a different challenge than coaching teenagers, but Harris said the experience has been great.

“I’ve swam in a club before, so I’ve been around club swimming,” Harris said. “It’s a good experience teaching finite strokes and how to perfect them. It’s a little different from high school, but I’ve also had kids on my team that have never swum before and never been on a team before and that’s similar. And here I have older kids helping and sibling helping other siblings.”

With the team putting up record numbers at meets this summer, Harris and parents of the swimmers expect the improvement to continue.

“We basically have kids that have gotten an idea how to swim,” Harris said. “And older kids have really helped out with younger kids at events.”

Shane Mettlen can be reached at 825-0771, ext. 127 or