Hello!
Last spring, the MIAC swim coaches voted to extend the MIAC Swimming & Diving Championships one day, to 4 days (I voted against this, by the way). The championship was supposed to be Wednesday through Saturday. As it went up the chain of command, it got to the MIAC Faculty Representatives, who in the middle of the summer, changed the meet to Thursday-Sunday. Sunday was always a great day to catch-up on school work missed over the championship. Losing that day will be very tough on the student/athletes after Sunday night. I get that it theoretically it should save us missed class time on the front end; but I don’t expect many swimmers, across the whole MIAC, will be attending class on Monday morning for sure.
With this new format have come changes. Our team (both me and the athletes), like many, had a tough time adjusting. Because there were only 3 events, and only an evening session starting with diving, the pool opened for warm-up at 5pm. Our swimmers, excited to get after it, got in right away, and then waited forever for the first swim event at 7:15pm. Having the 800 free relay BEFORE the 200 medley relay changed what we did with our relays a bit. It’s tough to recover in 20 minutes from a hard 200 free in the 800 free relay. We had to pull someone who was on the medley due to how wiped out he got. Which leads me to the thing that never changes…
We had a lot of “first swim jitters”. Even with the reminder that a good 200 freestyle is swum trying to have a great 2nd 100, the guys and girls (with a few exceptions) went out WAY TOO FAST in the first 50 of their races. It made for a lot of pain coming home on the last 50. In the 200 medley relay, we had a lot of people “spinning their wheels like they were driving on ice”.
The positives from the night were many!! All 4 men on the 800 free relay went 1:41 in their 200 free. No one else in the entire race had anyone go 1:41! We moved up spots from where we were seeded. The divers (a HUGE part of this year’s conference effort) put all 4 guys in the top 8! The men are currently in 1st place, 31 points ahead of heavy favorite St. Thomas. The women are in 4th place with 18 events to go, so we’re just getting started.
This morning, we have the 500 free, 200 IM, and 50 free individual races, as well as women’s 3-meter diving prelims. We always talk about “setting the table” in the morning to “feast” at night. We will try to get as many people as possible to move up from out of the top 16 into the top 16 and get as many as possible up into the top 8 going into finals tonight. I’m excited to have the rest of the team join the meet!
You can follow results, live video stream, and other championship info on the MIAC Championship page found here:
https://www.miacathletics.com/playoffs/2018-19/sd
Have a Great Day! The team is ready to swim hard. Should be a VERY fun morning!
Jon Carlson