Halloween Practice

The traditional Halloween practice was a success … how could it not be? New practice caps (this year … new meet caps too) and a small ton of candy. (I dropped $50 bucks on some high quality sugar and 14 wonderful apples).

Before going too much further I need to give credit where credit is due … the halloween practice comes from my year as the Graduate Assistant coach at Slippery Rock University where the coach, Bob Ogoreuc, had been doing this practice for years. After I took over the Head Coaching position at SRU I invited Bob back as the guest coach and he gladly participated. After 2 years at SRU as the head coach I took the job at LHU and brought the tradition with me.

This is how it works … There is a water jug full of candy (aka the pumpkin) and before the practice begins each of the women receive a new orange or black practice cap (aka the pillow case). The coaches have a slip of paper for each one of the women on the team…saying one of three things. (1) CANDY (2) a mini set (TRICK) (3) or a game (TREAT) … when a slip of paper is drawn from the bag the women either get Candy, play a game or do the mini set.

Examples of what the slips of paper say (in addition to CANDY)
4 x 75 @ 1:00, 300 im, 10 x 25 @ :20
3 minute drag jump

a few of my favorites are…(inspired by watching Survivor)
“pick 2 people to swim a 100 fly with and the rest eat candy”
&
“pick 3 people to eat candy with you and the rest do a 100 fly”

Some of the games we do are sharks & minnows, duck duck goose, and the famous bob for apples (this year’s epic battle for the last apples came down to Nicole & Rachel). The picture a the top of the post shows Sam Durham with her apple.

(Sorry Mr E … I realize this is too much sugar for the team, but I assure you that with how hard they have been working they earned it)

Clarion Fall Classic

Our first ‘real’ swim meet of the season for the 4th year in a row was the Clarion Fall Classic. This is a really good meet to kick off the season because it offers every event that we compete in throughout the season except the 1000 & 800 free relay (but lucky for us the 1650 is offered … more on that event shortly).

The women had to sign up for a total of 6 events … the 1650 counted as 2 events. I was nice enough to surprise everyone by entering 4, 200 freestyle relays (the last event of the meet) … giving everyone an additional 50 freestyle.

We boarded a bus driven by Dave. After 2 uneventful hours we arrived at the Super 8 in Clarion. Not the classiest joint to stay at in Clarion but for the total amount of time spent there (+/- 12 hours) the price was right. (one room even came with a refrigerator that doubled as an air ‘freshener’ … the scent of a 3 week old salad is probably not a top selling scent). We unloaded bags and headed to the pool.

After a longer warm up than usual we settled in for the evening swimming. I told the women to focus more on effort rather than actual time. With how we trained all week I wasn’t expecting overly fast times … (a later comparison found that only 1 repeat swim from the year before, out of 14, was faster than the previous season … something I expected and am completely okay with)

Dinner was Vinny’s delivery … 4th year in a row and they didn’t disappoint. As we got started with dinner we were graced with the HBO showing of “I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry” … the Kevin James & Adam Sandler duo is quite hilarious.

Saturday morning had our 4 brave 1650 swimmers waking up earlier than everyone else, grabbing some breakfast and heading to the pool with myself. The remainder of the team got an extra 45 minutes of sleep and road over to the pool with Katie, arriving in time to watch the 1650.

After the day of swimming we boarded the bus and parked at the Clarion Wendys giving the team the choice of Wendys or Subway. For dessert we had multiple goody bags full of cookies and sugary snacks provided by several different swim team parents and supporters. All delicious stuff!!!

Finishing in the top 6 this weekend were…

~Amanda Terray (200 backstroke) 1st – 2:09.87
(PSAC cut time)
~Rachel Vagnoni (200 breaststroke) 4th – 2:46.83
~Amanda Terray (50 freestyle) 5th – 25.93
~Kasey Campbell (500 freestyle) 6th – 5:41.72
~Amanda Palmer (200 butterfly) 2nd – 2:201.30
~Kasey Campbell (1650 freestyle) 4th – 19:40.44
(all time top 5 performance ~ 5th)
~Amanda Terray (100 backstroke) 2nd – 1:00.94
(PSAC cut time)
~Amanda Palmer (400im) 3rd – 5:05.37
~Vagnoni, Durham, Campbell, Terray (200 fr rel) 4th

Next up is our Saturday morning trip to Mansfield.

Kick ‘til You Die

We do this swim set once or twice a year that is a 100 swim starting at 2:00…subtracting 1 second after each one…making # 2 on 1:59, #3 on 1:58 etc. going until the swimmer can’t make the interval anymore.

This morning we did all out kicking across the width of the pool starting on 1:00. I was really pleased with how the set went … started a little slow so next time we will be doing this with shoes and potentially adding something after the first 20 or so when the women are getting over :30 rest.

(note: we did this set morning after our hour of power … adding to the leg fatigue)

Dirty Dozen Minus 1 (with shoes)

We did the world (not so) famous hour of power / dirty dozen (minus 1) with shoes today…basically the women are in the deep end of the pool treading water. In small groups (we ended up with 4 groups) doing the dirty dozen.

Dirty Dozen consists of 1 press out, 1 push up, 1 full sit up for every width of the pool swum. The first time you do 1 of each, second time you do 2 of each, third time you do 3 of each … continuing on until you reach 12. (doing the dirty dozen minus 1, the final number is 11 … dirty bakers dozen is 13).

For today’s practice, when the women weren’t doing the dirty dozen they were in the water. Arms out of the water whenever anyone in the small group was out of the water. (which happens quite a bit in small groups)

All with shoes on … not an easy hour!

Crimson v. White

Saturday, October 11 was our 3rd annual Crimson v. White meet and it was glorious. Leading up to the meet we had a really great/hard week of practice.

While at the meet, I really enjoy seeing the women show some spirit and get up and cheer for each other. This year’s squad is a young one and I am hoping that the “team” we had this weekend continues to be the “team” we have throughout the season!! It will sure be fun to watch.

Before the meet I told the women to keep the focus on racing rather than the times. The best thing about the sport of swimming, in my humble opinion, is the racing aspect of it…there isn’t anything better.

We had 3 meet records broken...

Amanda Palmer broke 2 of them the first being the 100 fly with a time of 1:04.57 besting Ashley Lightcap’s previous time of 1:07.42 and the 200 im with a time of 2:26.70 besting Stephanie Kudrick’s previous time of 2:29.01.

Amanda Terray in the 100 free with a time of 58.23 besting Kelly Grieneisen’s previous time of 59.00. (note: Freshman Samantha Durham was also under the old record with her time of 58.89)

Coach Katie and Joel were in charge of dividing the teams and the returning swimmers were in charge of putting together the line up. Everybody did such a good job that the final score ended up being Crimson 44 / White 43. Good stuff!!

We have 2 really hard weeks of practice coming up leading up to our first ‘official’ meet @ Clarion.

Bulletin Board Contest

Katie, our graduate assistant, and I tried to “do the bulletin boards” last week…our efforts were met with disaster. After about 10 minutes and 2 attempts to put the paper on 1 of the 3 boards it became quite apparent that if we continued on the boards were going to look quite dreadful.

Then light bulb: lets make this a team building opportunity. That afternoon at practice we announced to the team that the next afternoons practice would consist of dryland and a bulletin board contest. The team was divided into not so even teams of 3 and each team picked a board and topic to cover. The topics were … records, quotes/motivation and information.

The prize is an exempt status from lane lines and first dibs on the dunkin doughnuts I provided after that morning’s workout.

The winning board (as selected by myself, Katie and Joel … our student assistant), by split decision, was the information board.

I have no shame going on record to say I couldn’t even come close to putting together the ‘masterpieces’ that were the team boards. Great work!!

(note: the crackberry cam doesn't do the boards justice!)