Saturday Thoughts

I worked with 5 different groups this morning, it was awesome!

The morning started @ 5:50am with the Platinum & Regional Development practices where we were running a time trial for some athletes who needed times for provincials. Sadly, the trial yielded no new provincial qualifiers, but did allow 1 athlete to swim a new event at provincials and a couple of new best times. The practice then changed focus to body and head position during breathing. Overall, it was a great 2 hours; especially since Platinum spent most of last night working on basic skills.

Next I spent 90min with the Gold group. I have to say that the Gold group is AWESOME! I was very impressed with their knowledge of skills and strokes. Butterfly in that group is really coming along and quite a few swimmers look great technically. We took the opportunity of having the whole pool to work on turns, pushoffs and underwater work. It was the most fun I had all morning. Chris is doing a GREAT job with that group; I was really impressed by the quality of swimming in that group.

The Elite group arrived at 9:30 (from the gym) for some speed work. Short 900 warmup, then some dive fast 25s, 10m fast turn work and easy swimming. Bronze took some time out of their practice to watch the Elite group sprint at top speed. I think the Elite swimmers really enjoyed that attention and I think that the Bronze group took something away from it. It was fun. After the Elite group was done sprinting and was warming down, I worked with the Bronze group on dives. There are a couple of very strong new comers to that group. I am pretty excited to see them race.

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I had to meet with a couple of coaches in Guelph last night, so we chose to meet at U of G to watch some of the OUA Championships (University Swimming Provincials) which have become SUPER fast! I'm pretty excited to see that and plan on giving the meet info out sooner so that people can watch live. In case you're interested, there is a live webcast available: http://www.ssncanada.ca/ Finals start @ 6pm. Check it out, it will be fast... but its not the same as being there.

Incidentally, I caught video of mens 200BK and the mens 4x100 medley relay. Both were unbelievable races! I have had lots of questions about how fast Ontario swimming is right now... watch and see. For anyone who thinks that they'll be able to walk onto a University team without training hard as a club swimmer... I've got bad news for you...





Again, if you're planning on joining a Canadian University and want to see where you would stack up, live results from the OUA Championships can be found here: http://www.guelphmarlins.ca/liveresults/