Joey Souza Has Seen It All In His O’Dea Swimming Career by Jeffrey Woods

SEATTLE- O’Dea High School junior Joey Souza has been dedicated to Swimming at O’Dea since he was a freshman despite dealing with many unusual events. There’s no question Souza is one of few who has seen the team progress throughout the years. Souza is one of only 3 juniors on the Fighting Irish swim and dive team which is the smallest among all grades on the roster. By seeing all of the changes to the team over the years including seeing one of his former teammates become a coach, Souza can certainly bring great leadership to underclassmen through all of the experiences over the years.

Souza is part of an outstanding Fighting Irish team that is doing extremely well this season, Sitting at an undefeated 4-0 record, Souza highlighted what he thought was the most cherishing win.

“Definitely Eastside [Catholic], it feels good when football doesn’t destroy them, we get to follow them up, we then get to brag to our football friends and say, look at us, we did our job.”

Being able to do things like brag to the football team who lost to Eastside Catholic about beating Eastside Catholic during their season just builds more chemistry throughout the team. That’s probably a valid reason why Souza and the Fighting Irish are doing so well this season.

In a sport where it’s extremely easy to get out of shape and be completely lost if you’re not in the pool consistently, The Fighting Irish swim team has had to deal with many issues including cancellation of practices. This season as a whole has been one unlike any other season where all winter sports teams, especially the Fighting Irish swim team, had to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic. There are things teams have to keep in mind like outbreaks and cancellations which can occur with just a couple positive tests. For a part of the season the matches have occurred without fans in attendance which can be a true mental problem for many athletes.

For the Fighting Irish, Souza discussed some of the things they have had to overcome this year.

“Covid has screwed us up several times, we’ve had to miss practices and we can’t have spectators at our meets, we missed practice last week, we’ve been missing guys, we had an outbreak during winter break so there was little to no practice during winter break,” Souza said.

Souza and the rest of the Fighting Irish are clearly strong-minded individuals for being able to push through this unique and tough season and still being able to perform at a ridiculously good level. But despite all of the adversity, Souza believes the underclassmen haven’t needed as much guidance as expected.

“They aren’t all leaders, but they all give us confidence,” Souza said.

For Souza there have been moments where he’s expected to lead, but maybe he hasn’t had to with strong underclassmen like Jack Skarda. Having great confidence in underclassmen really gives the Fighting Irish that sense of a deep roster.

Saying Souza has had a little adversity throughout his Swimming career would be an extreme understatement. Souza has seen it all. Souza is certainly looking to be a positive leader both in and out of the pool the rest of this year and next year for the O’Dea Fighting Irish.