The Pendleton Heights swimming program has been growing in the last several years, and coach Jeff Maydak has played a big part in that.

Pendleton News reporter Justin Albers talked with Maydak to find out his thoughts on the season and the performances of some of his top swimmers.

1. Your girls team is performing very well so far this season and looks poised to put some individuals in the state finals. Talk about their progress this year.

Our team is a bit smaller than in the past so depth has been an issue. That has put more pressure on everyone to perform up to their capabilities every event, each meet.

Fortunately, the girls have met this challenge more times than not and several have picked up the slack when others might have had an off night.

Our immediate goals are to perform well at the conference championships on Jan. 17, which should allow us to compete for the HHC title.

We'll look past that meet to sectionals and beyond after Jan. 17.

2. Autumn Brown and Nikki Weston have led your team like you expected they would. How much do they mean to the team on a day-to-day basis?

Both Autumn and Nikki lead the team by example in the way they conduct themselves in practice. Both work extremely hard in practice; hopefully the rest of the team makes the correlation between hard work and their results.

3. The boys team has had another difficult year, but they are improving. How do you motivate them to keep coming back each day and working as hard as the day before?

The great aspect about a sport like swimming is that goals are malleable to the situation.

We always focus on our individual performances striving to improve but some meets we may focus more on winning events if we think we'll be competitive as a team.

The main problem we have with the boys team is numbers.