Thoughts on a Year of Swimming During a Pandemic
It’s been a strange and challenging swimming year, for our Patriot Family, starting with the suspension of our training for three months in March 2020 and continuing with the limited access to training, when we were final able to get back into the water mid June 2020. Our swimmers went into this short course season with half the practice time of a normal season, and no swim meets to sharpen their racing skills. Swimmers, Parents & Coaches all, were just happy to be back in the water and doing something that felt somewhat normal, in a time that has been chocked full of abnormal. Speed was the last thing on everyone’s mind and the unspoken question in the coaches minds…..”How do you get kids faster with so little training time?”
For months there was no clear answer but the kids were looking surprisingly great in the water. In whispered comments to each other, coaches were wondering how fast they’d be if they raced. In a still volatile pandemic environment, entering any of the handful of meets that were being offered was not an option. We were not going to risk they safety of our swimmers, but the kids were noticing how good they felt in the water and began wondering the same as the coaches. Those questions were going to need answers.
It was decided to run a sanctioned time trial at the end of January. We were going to use 25 Meter pool. It was a safe choice since we had never raced short course meters and with unreliable conversions, it would be hard to make a very clear comparison to short course yards. Admittedly, we were worried that if the performances were poor, we’d end up breaking the psyche of our swimmers and kill their motivation to continue to train. It would be a long slog till an expected “normal” September 2021 if this backfired.
Preparing for the time trial was oddly familiar and comforting, even with the new aspects of building starting blocks and learning live streaming. The kids reported for the check in with apprehensive looks but quickly settled in as they went about the very normal habit of warming up. Once the Referee blew her whistle, the explosion began. The kids raced their hearts out and in many cases, beat their short course yard times with their short course meter times. It was a happy result and we added more time trials, both yards and meters, to keep the ball rolling.
The kids responded with great performances and personal bests over and over again. We established short course meter team records and smashed many existing short course yard team records. We concluded the short course with 3 days of mind blowing performances by two of our boys at the Speedo Eastern Zone Sectional Championship. They knew no limits and just kept getting faster and breaking records as the meet progressed, culminating in a 5th place men’s finish for our Team. Our highest regional ranking ever, by far.
Not in our wildest imagination, would we have every predicted such great results considering the severe limits covid had places on us. I’d like to congratulate our athletes who rose to a challenge not seen in over a hundred years. Also our coaching staff who all willingly accepted sacrifices so we can keep the kids in the water and for also finding ways to keep them training hard and racing faster. A special shout out to Coach Marc who made the impossible possible at Speedos, defying conventional wisdom about training and teaching us all that the only limits that exist are the ones we place on ourselves.
Looking forward to a great long course and continuing a tradition of hard work and excellence.
