After a long three days in Federal Way, the team is back in Walla Walla taking a well earned day off. Sunday morning brought more fast swims from the Whitman Men and Women. Freshman swimmers Shanley Miller, Kincaid Hoffman, and Sean Terada both placed themselves into Whitman's top-10 with their performances in the 200 breaststroke, 200 backstroke, and 200 butterfly, respectively. Tai Hallstein also moved up in Whitman's top-10 after nearly breaking her second school record of the meet with her 100 freestyle swim of 53.44, just .10 off the Whitman record. Karl Mering achieved his second NCAA "B" time standard of the meet with his 200 butterfly time of 1:49.15. Claire Collins also bettered her 200 breaststroke time and missed the "B" time standard by just over a second in her 200 breaststroke, going a 2:25.54. Junior, Nic Win, also posted a season-best effort in the 200 backstroke with a time of 1:57.35. For full results, including relays and splits, be sure to visit the the live results page.
There are two factors that make a three day meet at this time of year difficult. First and foremost, all of our student-athletes are entering into the final week of regularly scheduled classes of the semester. That means that papers, tests, quizzes and projects that professors want done before finals week quickly pile up. Leaving on Thursday afternoon last week, missing Friday classes, and then spending ten to twelve hours per day at the pool all weekend makes it a challenge for our swimmers stay ahead of the curve. Academic challenges aren't foreign to Whitman student-athletes but being away from campus this time of year is certainly a unique and difficult. Fortunately, both Whitman's academic policies and the swim team's culture combine to create an academically-focused group of swimmers who fully recognize that college is about education first.
The other challenge with traveling to such a big, fast meet at this time of year is that it poses something of a training catch-22. Had we fully rested and tapered our team over the past two weeks to ensure that the fastest possible mid-season times were achieved by everyone, we would arrive back on the pool deck tomorrow with a low level of conditioning--effectively requiring that we use the next two weeks to rebuild the foundation of yardage and aerobic capacity that we had before the Thanksgiving break. On the other hand, we could have trained straight through the weekend's meet, not resting at all, hoping that the high level of competition would be enough to bring out some fast swims, but all the while maintaining the level of training capacity and intensity that we had two weeks ago. Instead of either of those, we split the difference and had hard practices last week on Monday and Tuesday, and then rested on Wednesday and Thursday. It's not a perfect system. Some of our swimmers found themselves feeling fresh and ready to rock all weekend. Others didn't quite get there. But, in the scope of the season as a whole, last weekend's meet--although it is very important--is not the most important meet of the year. For those on the team who reached season-best times or NCAA "B" cuts, the meet is a huge motivator for training through the rest of the winter. For those who didn't achieve any best times, they get to keep training hard knowing that in February when the time comes to rest for NWC Championships, everything will fall into place.
So, for the next two weeks we'll be back to work! In both the pool and weight room, we'll continue to pile on yardage and intensity, all the while balancing the academic challenges that naturally arise at this time of year. I can't wait!
