Northwestern University Athletics
The Frosh: Entry #2
12/8/2009 12:00:00 AM | Men's Swimming and Diving
Dec. 8, 2009
It's been quite some time since the last blog entry, but much has happened since. We have had numerous dual meets and countless practices. Training has remained at its normal high intensity level and all of us are noticing improvements in the weight room which is bound to pay off later in the season. The early signing period for incoming freshman is over and we have brought in a very strong class. We are extremely excited for each of them to join the Wildcat family next year.
Our first major meet of the season has come and gone. While the meet had its ups and downs, the TYR Invitational was a huge success and a great learning tool for the team. I know that many of us (myself included) had a little bit of trouble getting ready to swim fast early in the morning. While this was not a huge problem at this meet, it would have been at a larger scale meet such as Big Ten's or NCAA's. We need to make sure that we are able to swim our best in the morning in order to have another chance to compete at night -- when it really counts. Going into the meet with very little rest and a whole lot of training was difficult, but the meet seemed to get better for many as the days passed. This strongly suggests that with some more hard training and some quality rest before the meet, Big Ten's will be incredible.
My goals after the meet have not changed much. Personally, easy speed is going to be my main focus along with perfecting some other smaller aspects of the strokes. I believe that a key to success in my events is that ability to get out quickly with ease, while my competitors are laboring to keep up early on.
We leave for our yearly training trip on the 12th of December and will remain in Colorado Springs at the Olympic Training Center until December 23rd. This trip will help our efforts tremendously with the addition of the altitude. At over 6,000 feet above sea level, it is a prime place to train. I'm sure it will also be a great time to further bond with each other and further discuss our goals and where we are presently.
It is strange looking back just a year and realizing that at this point I had already signed my letter of intent. A year before that I was a junior in high school, completely unaware of where I wanted to spend my college years. This is a very important time for juniors in high school. It may seem as though college is far off and can be put on the back-burner, but it really is closer than you know. Start your search now, get in contact with coaches, talk to athletes from different schools, look at each school's website, and make sure to keep up the school work. This is a very important time that should be fun -- a new door in your life is about to be unlocked.
