Please share your true swimming stories of remarkable feats, inspiring, interesting or unsual.
Today Sat Jan 22nd, 2010 at the end of my blog I retold a story I heard UT Men's assistant coach tell the mens team this morning.
Please share yours. I look forward to reading them. Let's gather round the fire and be amazed.
Swim Faster Faster,
Ande
We had a very similar thing with our conference champs in the Northwest Conference of the NAIA (now NCAA Div 3). The Univ. of Puget Sound had been champs for the past 500 years or so, and we (Linfield College) thought we could unseat them that year. Our coach had done careful planning in order to extract every point out of the meet possible, and this meant for some of us to swim back to back races and win them. Some people were swimming the 200 fly, 400 IM, & 1650 etc. just to take the 10th-16th places to steal points. Everything worked out basically as planned, and we were leading the meet by something like 4 points or so going into the final 400 free relay, and every team knew this. Basically we had to win the 400 free relay, because if UPS won it they would have enough points to overtake us. Well, UPS was a powerhouse and definitely cleaned our clocks in the relay, but we had backup! Whitworth College was also a strong force in the 400 free relay, and the entire pool began cheering for Whitworth to beat UPS, so that we could win the meet. Our coach actually missed the last 2 splits for our swimmers because she was so involved in the big race. That's how it happened, and we ended up defeating the defending champions by a mere 2 points! Sooo, all those points that each person ended up "stealing" all throughout the meet paid off for a total team effort. Sometimes it's not who wins the events, but the strategy implemented to win.
We had a very similar thing with our conference champs in the Northwest Conference of the NAIA (now NCAA Div 3). The Univ. of Puget Sound had been champs for the past 500 years or so, and we (Linfield College) thought we could unseat them that year. Our coach had done careful planning in order to extract every point out of the meet possible, and this meant for some of us to swim back to back races and win them. Some people were swimming the 200 fly, 400 IM, & 1650 etc. just to take the 10th-16th places to steal points. Everything worked out basically as planned, and we were leading the meet by something like 4 points or so going into the final 400 free relay, and every team knew this. Basically we had to win the 400 free relay, because if UPS won it they would have enough points to overtake us. Well, UPS was a powerhouse and definitely cleaned our clocks in the relay, but we had backup! Whitworth College was also a strong force in the 400 free relay, and the entire pool began cheering for Whitworth to beat UPS, so that we could win the meet. Our coach actually missed the last 2 splits for our swimmers because she was so involved in the big race. That's how it happened, and we ended up defeating the defending champions by a mere 2 points! Sooo, all those points that each person ended up "stealing" all throughout the meet paid off for a total team effort. Sometimes it's not who wins the events, but the strategy implemented to win.
