Unalaska’s swim team wrapped up its 2025 season last week at the region tournament in Homer, sending off junior Adyson Scott to compete in the Alaska State Swim Championships.
Unalaska High School swim team coach Amber Le said Scott and the team have been slashing records this year. She said they’ve broken 15 records total as a team, including school records and pool records, which include community member times.
Scott broke over half of those in individual races. She and her relay teammates, Hawaii Maynard-Gumbs, Lillian Parker and Camyll Paninahug broke five records. Paninahug broke two individual records, as well.
This year, Le tried a new coaching method, having swimmers practice a number of different strokes, instead of just focusing on the ones they’d compete in.
“We kind of took a risk, and I had them do a whole bunch of training for different strokes,” Le said. “And I think that helped a lot.”
Scott is competing in the state competition for the second year in a row. Le said Scott was the first Unalaska girl swimmer to qualify for the state tournament in decades. This year, she’ll race in the girls 200 yard individual medley and the girls 100 yard breaststroke.
Scott plays other sports too, which often overlap with the swim season. But she said swimming is special to her.
“There's something special about the sport,” Scott said. “I love doing an individual sport. That's really fun for me.”
Scott said she’s swimming the 100 yard breaststroke in about 1 minute and 12 seconds with hopes of cutting some time off that this week, and she’s already got some goals for next year.
“My senior year, I was really hoping to get to like a 1:07 [time] because that's our men's record at the school, for high school,” Scott said. “So I just thought that would be really exciting and inspiring for some of the younger swimmers that are going to come up at our school just to see that we can still get there — we can do it just as much as they can.”
No matter how things go, Scott said she’s excited to be able to race in the state championships.
“This week, we've been working a lot on perfecting all the little things, but just keeping in mind that being here is such a privilege, and we're so lucky, and I think it's really special to get to compete at state,” she said.
Scott’s first race is Friday. The state swim meet starts at 1 p.m. You can find more information, including the schedule, on the Alaska Schools Activities Association’s website.
