I'm a 21 year old male, 5'8, around 155 lbs, with 7-8% body fat. I've been swimming now for about 1 year total. My background is in cross country, basketball, and track. I've dropped my times quite a bit in a year;
50 free from 28 high to 26.69
100 free from 1:10 to 1:00.89
200 free from 2:24 to 2:16
500 free from 7:00 to 6:19
I'm from Missouri and I've got one more semester at a community college to get my associates degree, then I plan on transferring to Drury Univesity or Missouri State. I really want to walk on to one of their teams and I figure my best choice is to go the distance route, the 500 and up to have a chance at making one of these teams. Right now I'm swimming 30,000yds/m a week and doing dryland work (weights) 3x a week. My stroke is very solid, keeping me injury free (knock on wood), and I figure I can get up to around 50,000+ yds a week by the start of summer and train like a madman this summer before fall semester. I can swim with a masters team once a week without having to pay a monthly fee and the rest of my training is solo. My test meet will be the end of July, Show-me-State games in Columbia. Any words of advice?
Not having ever swum competitively in college, those times are decent, but...you need to beef them up. When I was 15 and stopped swimming USA Swimming (2001), I was swimming times in that territory (27 low/59 high/2:20/6:20). But the only people I was beating were 13 year old guys, if I was lucky. I'm quite impressed though you've done most of this one your own, with the amount of swimming experience you have. Certainly your growth curve looks to be greater than mine was, even with my sucky practice regimen (3/week generally).
Certainly make sure you're working on your technique. Only been swimming for a year? There's certainly gains to be made from improved techniques, and serious gains from my experience. But getting someone else to coach you is a must; there's only so much you can see yourself from inside the pool. It might not be cheap (cheap in the student-sense!), but if this is what you want to do, it's a worthwhile investment. (Some teams have a student rate, or might be cajoled into giving one).
One thing I might also advise, especially given the short period of time, is to take a look at your other strokes too. It may be that your freestyle is your fastest stroke, but you may also be assuming that given that the barrier to acquisition of freestyle versus other strokes is lower. It might be a gamble of sorts, but an experienced coach may be able to pick up that you might be better at another stroke. Granted, developing alternative strokes takes time, but I wouldn't ignore it (even though it takes time--it took me seven years to get a legal breaststroke kick!). My coaches were big believers in not specializing too early.
Make sure you aren't training at the consequence of your schooling. I knew a female gymnist at my D1 school who walked-on, but more or less walked-on because her GPA was great and helped out the team's GPA (of course, she was a decent gymnast too!). Any bonus you can tack on to help seal the deal is always helpful. I'm not really sure what kinds of numbers would be good here, but certainly a GPA > 3.0 wouldn't hurt, and > 3.5 would be fantastic. And make sure you don't just go somewhere just because of swimming. You want to get an education too, right?
But let's say you improve your times, but not insanely so. There are likely D3 schools that would take you with sub-optimal times because a) they want swimmers (some of the programs are tiny), and b) they'd love someone with a great attitude and work ethic, despite how fast they are currently.
Example: As I alluded to above, I had a coach who did the intermediate level 13&U's at my club, before departing to head coach in D3 (he's at his second post, on the West Coast). Had I continued to swim through high school (this schooling thing interfered), even with times moving up the growth curve as they were but certainly not phenomenal, I think he would have taken me (his program is very small, 6-12 swimmers I think). He knew (trying not to be boastful here) that I was fairly mature and had a great work ethic.
Now certainly, those kinds of places aren't the best of programs in the world. But they exist if you're willing to look for them, and I think someone would be willing to take you.
If this is what you want to do, then I wish you the best of luck with it. It certainly is something well worth working towards.
Patrick King
Not having ever swum competitively in college, those times are decent, but...you need to beef them up. When I was 15 and stopped swimming USA Swimming (2001), I was swimming times in that territory (27 low/59 high/2:20/6:20). But the only people I was beating were 13 year old guys, if I was lucky. I'm quite impressed though you've done most of this one your own, with the amount of swimming experience you have. Certainly your growth curve looks to be greater than mine was, even with my sucky practice regimen (3/week generally).
Certainly make sure you're working on your technique. Only been swimming for a year? There's certainly gains to be made from improved techniques, and serious gains from my experience. But getting someone else to coach you is a must; there's only so much you can see yourself from inside the pool. It might not be cheap (cheap in the student-sense!), but if this is what you want to do, it's a worthwhile investment. (Some teams have a student rate, or might be cajoled into giving one).
One thing I might also advise, especially given the short period of time, is to take a look at your other strokes too. It may be that your freestyle is your fastest stroke, but you may also be assuming that given that the barrier to acquisition of freestyle versus other strokes is lower. It might be a gamble of sorts, but an experienced coach may be able to pick up that you might be better at another stroke. Granted, developing alternative strokes takes time, but I wouldn't ignore it (even though it takes time--it took me seven years to get a legal breaststroke kick!). My coaches were big believers in not specializing too early.
Make sure you aren't training at the consequence of your schooling. I knew a female gymnist at my D1 school who walked-on, but more or less walked-on because her GPA was great and helped out the team's GPA (of course, she was a decent gymnast too!). Any bonus you can tack on to help seal the deal is always helpful. I'm not really sure what kinds of numbers would be good here, but certainly a GPA > 3.0 wouldn't hurt, and > 3.5 would be fantastic. And make sure you don't just go somewhere just because of swimming. You want to get an education too, right?
But let's say you improve your times, but not insanely so. There are likely D3 schools that would take you with sub-optimal times because a) they want swimmers (some of the programs are tiny), and b) they'd love someone with a great attitude and work ethic, despite how fast they are currently.
Example: As I alluded to above, I had a coach who did the intermediate level 13&U's at my club, before departing to head coach in D3 (he's at his second post, on the West Coast). Had I continued to swim through high school (this schooling thing interfered), even with times moving up the growth curve as they were but certainly not phenomenal, I think he would have taken me (his program is very small, 6-12 swimmers I think). He knew (trying not to be boastful here) that I was fairly mature and had a great work ethic.
Now certainly, those kinds of places aren't the best of programs in the world. But they exist if you're willing to look for them, and I think someone would be willing to take you.
If this is what you want to do, then I wish you the best of luck with it. It certainly is something well worth working towards.
Patrick King
