Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

By Jay Spivey

For the Clemmons Courier

CLEMMONS — Much was billed about Tuesday’s swim meet between two Clemmons swimming pools – Brookwood at Clemmons West. 

And as with many rivalries within the Greater Forsyth Swim League, Tuesday’s meet between both boys and girls didn’t disappoint. Clemmons West took control and won 456-400. 

That result pleased Kelley Cundiff, who is in her second season as head swim coach at Clemmons West after previously coaching at Brookwood for two years. 

“I’ve coached every kid that was at the swim meet other than like 20 kids,” she said. “I knew going in we had to be pretty strong because a lot of them swim year-round. And honestly, I know we have really good relays, so I wasn’t really worried.” 

Even before the meet the pool at Clemmons West was brimming with excitement, according to Cundiff.  

“A lot of smiling faces,” she said. “I mean all the kids knew each other. Going in, we have a lot (people) from both sides, so whenever everybody got here (there were) a lot of hugs immediately as soon as everybody walked through the gates. Our kids were going over there, their kids were coming over here. Lots of hugs, lots of high-fives. Just a fun environment.” 

Much of the success Clemmons West had was because of depth. 

“We had more kids swimming,” Cundiff said. “So, based off numbers, none of us were really too worried because I have a lot of year-round kids.” 

Even though the meet was progressing well for Clemmons West, the team still had to wait to feel comfortable. 

“I knew once we hit the half mark point that we were ahead,” Cundiff said. “And that once we hit relays we should still ahead. But we didn’t really celebrate celebrate until the very end when they announced it. We tried to keep it on the hush-hush.” 

Clemmons West had contributions from both the boys and girls teams.  

“It’s not usual, but we have like an equal number almost of the girls and boys in most of our stuff,” Cundiff said. “We definitely are a little slack in the boys (ages) 11-18, but…Number-wise, I can still move kids up and get the points.” 

Still early in her second season as coach, Cundiff has seen Clemmons West make some strides. 

“I guess being a senior coach you kind of know that points-wise relays get more points, so even if you don’t have enough to fill a (ages) 15-18 I could move a 10-year-old up or an 11-year-old on up. What we like to do is, I like to move a 6-year-old up and they get pumped. And the older kids even tend to swim faster when they have little ones in their relay.  

“We do that, and we’ve done it the last few years and it seems to work really well for us. And it’s a lot of fun.” 

No matter the outcome of Tuesday’s meet many people in Clemmons were part of it. 

“For our pool it meant our first win of the season,” Cundiff said. “And our kids were pumped, and they’re ready to win again.” 

Cundiff even gave the boys and girls on the team a gift of sorts. 

“I kind of enticed them with if we won, I’d do a back flip off the diving board,” she said. “It got under them a little bit. So, I did a back flip at the end and a lot of the other kids stayed for that because they knew it was coming.”