The Mount Si High School girls swim team has continued its steady growth this year, reaching 40 students in the program. That’s double the participation rate of the team in 2013.

Head coach Patrick Stewart said that this season has seen growth not only in the number of students in the pool, but also in the skill of those swimmers.

“We have a lot of returners, but we also have a lot of new kids and there are some swimmers that are seniors who came out, juniors and sophomores, who hadn’t swum before, or maybe they swam in the past but not on our high school team,” Stewart said.

Mount Si also has more swimmers already qualified for the KingCo district meet than ever before.

“I have seven girls who qualified and one girl has qualified for districts in two events,” Stewart said. “That’s the most I’ve ever had qualify for KingCo. Especially that early in the season.”

Under Stewart, who has been coaching at Mount Si for four years, the girls swim team has grown rapidly. In 2013 the team had 19 students, in 2014 it was 26, in 2015 there were 35, and this year the head-count has reached 40.

But the number of swimmers isn’t the only thing increasing. The coaching staff is growing, too. This season, Mount Si has brought on Carly Petrzelka as the team’s assistant coach. Petrzelka was a collegiate swimmer during her time at Rice University in Texas, and learned of the coaching opportunity when she became more involved with the Snoqualmie Elementary School PTSA.

“We live here locally in the Valley. In getting involved with the elementary school on the PTSA board, I got to know Ray Wilson, and connected with him,” she said. “He knew I had a background in swimming — I swam through college — and when he was going to be the athletic director at Mount Si, he had mentioned to me the assistant swim coach position. I decided to step away from the corporate world and do things to bring me closer to my community and work locally.”

When the season began, Mount Si’s home pool at the Snoqualmie Ridge TPC was having problems with the heater, so they started at the Issaquah pool for two weeks and did dry land training to build strength.

The team practices back in Snoqualmie now, but Stewart said of their time out of the pool, “It seems to be paying off because kids are swimming faster.”

Petrzelka said the team has also benefited from having two coaches.

“We’ve been able to be more creative with the workouts with having two coaches,” she said. “They all have improved already and we are excited now that we are back in the pool continuing to work on the technique.”

Their next meet at the Snoqualmie Ridge TPC pool is at 3 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 13, against Issaquah.