LEWISTON — High school athletes are accustomed to arriving for practice when it’s dark outside, especially this time of year.

It’s dark when the St. Dom’s swim team walks into the YWCA for practice. But what sets the Saints apart from most other teams throughout winter sports is once they start warm-ups, it’s a lot closer to sunrise than sunset.

The Saints, some commuting from as far away as Oakland, report to the Y at 5:30 a.m. three days a week. Their first bleary-eyed stop is not the pool but the gym, where coach Marc Robitaille, usually coming off working the third shift as a sergeant with the Lewiston Police Department, cheerfully leads them through a half hour of dry land work.

The calisthenics are to improve fitness but also get the swimmers a little tired before they hit the pool. Thirteen swimmers, some stifling yawns, warm up as a group, then rotate through stations for cardiovascular and strength training.

It’s a difficult regimen, but one that has worked pretty well for a burgeoning swim team now in its fifth year of competition.

With two other high school teams in the Twin Cities and numerous other programs sharing the facility, getting pool time at a reasonable hour after school is impossible.

“It’s just the way it works out because of pool time and everything,” Robitaille said.

Some of the swimmers don’t mind practicing before school, even though they’re in the pool while many of their classmates are still hitting the snooze button. Having free time after school allows them more time to do homework, practice with their club teams, or work out on their own.

“Personally, I like it because I have practice after school, too,” said senior Ryan Robitaille, Marc’s son. “It’s tiring, definitely. But coffee’s always good.”

Sophomore Ciara Ferguson is one of three swimmers from Oakland who gets up at 4 a.m. and carpools an hour to Lewiston for practice. It isn’t easy, she said, but the schedule actually works to her advantage because it allows her to do after-school workouts in nearby Waterville.

“It’s hard to cope with at first, but once you get into the swing of things, it’s a force of habit to get up, I guess,” she said. “It would certainly be easier to do an afternoon practice. I still do my afternoon workouts at the Y (in Waterville). I like having two practices because it just makes me feel better.

Thanks to the fast-paced dry land session, everyone is fully awake once they reach the pool. The Saints get three of the six lanes for their one hour session, right next to the master swimmers doing their daily workout and senior citizen aquatics classes.

Since they have a small team, the focus is on individualized training and preparing the swimmers for their individual events, Marc Robitaille said.

“With a small team, we’re not going to get a lot of ‘W’s’ because you need numbers. So we don’t focus on wins and losses. Because of that, there’s not a ton of strategy involved, like, ‘OK, I have to put this person in the 100 free because we have to win this event.’ We just align the meet for what their needs and goals are,” he said.

“I really try to focus on what I can accomplish for the week,” said Ferguson, who has been swimming competitively since the age of six.

Robitaille allows his swimmers to pick what events they want to try, and leaves it up to each individual what he or she wants to accomplish during the season.

“As I see them progress, there are things that I’d like them to do, but it has to be their goals,” he said. “They have to want it themselves. They should know what goals they want to attain. They know what the state cut times are. If they tell me ‘I want to focus on this particular event and try to get into states,’ then I certainly accommodate them.”

The Saints have had their fair share of self-motivated swimmers. In their five years as a varsity program, they haven’t had the numbers to challenge for a team title. But they have had a lot of success in individual events. Last year, led by Allie Lewandowski, who won the 100 yard breaststroke, and Robitaille, they tallied more points at the Class B state meet than Lewiston or Edward Little did in Class A with teams almost three times as large.

Although being a small team has its advantages, the Saints would ultimately like to become as big as their local rivals.

“It’s small but we’re working every year to try to get new recruits,” said Ryan Robitaille, who holds school records in the 50 freestyle, 200 IM and 200 medley relay and plans to swim for Division II Saint Leo University in Florida next year.

Bianca Giron is one of five freshmen on the team getting used to the early wake-up calls.

“I just wanted to try something new,” Giron said. “Even on the days off, I still get up at 5:30.”

Coach Robitaille is amazed by the strides made by his new swimmers in just a couple of weeks of workouts.

“To come in and have never swam before, to come into this competition level, and to step up like they did during the last two weeks is remarkable,” he said.

“Obviously, we’re expecting to have good representation at state with our more experienced swimmers,” he added. “But we also have some of our younger swimmers who are going to show vast improvement.”