Lessons of a first-time head coach

We swam against Pacific on Friday in Stockton before heading to Fresno where we competed against Fresno State and Fresno Pacific on Saturday.  We came up 12 points short on Friday but gathered our strength (and added divers!) to take two victories on Saturday.  The trip was fun, motivating, and enlightening.  Here’s what I learned in my first travel meet as a head coach:

1.      Traveling with a women’s only team (with the exception of my husband Steve) is practically odor-free!  Our bus was clean and shockingly devoid of various body odors that permeate buses carrying co-ed or (God forbid) men’s only teams. 

Saturday morning's wake-up stretch.

      2.  Winston Churchill had it right:  “Never, never, never, never give up!”  Even though we were down by 31 points after the first five events Saturday, the swimmers and divers stuck together, kept their heads up, and fought with tenacity AND precision to win in the end. 

      3.      Chinese throat lozenges come not from another continent but from another planet.  After I’d lost my voice from screaming “GO!” for three hours, Meng-Jiao (“JoJo”) appeared bright-eyed beside me:  “I have Chinese medicine for little coach throat.  Oh, poor coach yell so loud.  Take this Chinese medicine.”  The Chinese medicine was in a small, grass green box with a picture of a turquoise water fall and Asian man in a coat and tie.  Wrapped in golden, pseudo-aluminum foil, the lozenges were square and amber.  The instant I dropped one on my tongue a tingly flood of mint-cinnamon-lemon mist flooded my nose.  Seriously, it was like Draino for the esophagus.  It opened all the blood vessels in my brain and sort of tickled my toenail cuticles.  My voice returned to normal immediately.  Long live JoJo-- Mountain West Conference Swimmer of the Week!

      4.      It’s fun to coach a group of girls so willing to tackle any challenge to win.  Ashley Kunz didn’t bat an eye when we added her to the 200 Breast; Erika Twenge, in her first meet as a freshman, showed remarkable poise when she was bumped to the A Relay; Alysse Ploussard executed practically flawless strategy in the 200 Free, an event with which she has a love-hate relationship; Gabby Guieb and Leslie Foley both stepped up to swim fly in relays, Luiza hammered out a fantastic 100 free to lead-off our victorious 400 Free Relay; and the list goes on and on…

The team at Fresno State.

      5.      The length of the list (see #4 above) epitomizes one of the most important lessons:  No single person can win a meet.  But all of us working, thinking, pushing, cheering, laughing together can win a meet.  And more important than winning a meet, we can walk away proudly knowing that WE did everything possible to maximize our individual abilities in the pursuit of TEAM greatness.

Campus Tour

Manzanita Lake on campus.

The University of Nevada is one of the Top 25 Outdoor Universities according to Outside Magazine which based the rankings on weather, proximity to natural areas, availability of recreational activities, green architecture, campus beauty and student descriptions of qualify of life.  Needless to say, we have an eco-conscious, lovely campus with an array of resources for student-athletes.  Here are some pictures:

Lombardi Pool

The "Joe"...student union

The Learning Center ...the library

Lecture hall

Classroom, example 1

Classroom, example 2

Classroom, example 3

The Journalism Building

Walking from the pool toward the Quad.

One of Steve's favorite green spots on campus.

Another classroom.

Davidson Math and Science.

Lab.

Around campus.

Original part of campus.

Original part of campus.

The Learning Center (library).

The Joe (student center).

The Coliseum.

Our weight room.

Another view of our weight room.

Davidson Math and Science.

Lions and Tigers and Bears...oh, my!

Photo by Michelle Forman.

Coming our way!!

Today several Wolf Pack swimmers volunteered at the Animal Ark, a wildlife sanctuary in Reno.  The Animal Ark is the home for tigers (one red, one white), cheetahs, mountain lions, wolves, coyotes, kit foxes, bears, tortoises, and various raptors (of the bird variety...not the Jurassic Park kind).  We built a Bear Rehab Enclosure where the Animal Ark will house orphaned cubs this winter and spring.  Our goal was to transport branches and logs burned in a fire in the late 1990s to the area where the enclosure will be.  Because the Animal Ark hopes to release the cubs back into the wild, they needed a barrier in front of the enclosure to prevent the bears from seeing visitors; in the past, bears have become too humanized to be released back into the wild.

Misha's phat ride right... before Melina had to push it up the hill. 

The building station.

Basically, we made two stations:  One group worked at the fire site, untangling branches and trying not to impale themselves or each other as they loaded the bracken into a rather aged trailer attached to a rad four-wheeler driven by none other than Captain Misha Fotoohi.  Misha (and an assistant who would perform the all-important task of punching secret codes into key pads that opened gates into official areas) would drive the trailer of sticks beyond the tiger habitat, up a steep hill, and behind the cheetah habitat where Steve directed the unloading and building process.  By the end of the day, the team had built an 8-foot wall from the firewood.  

We left with a few flesh wounds, torn articles of clothing, filthy faces, and gratitude that no one was eaten by the white tiger whose roar made my ribs shake and our Brazilian swimmer, Luiza, almost run back to Brazil.

Good work, in a good place, on a good day, with a GREAT team.

Group picture by Steve.

Group picture by Luiza.

Endurance Quotes: Strive with things impossible

To many people, endurance training refers primarily to physical parameters with a variety of labels such as aerobic capacity or stamina.  And, indeed, endurance training results in measurable, physical changes from the invisible (and underappreciated) such as mitochondrial volume to the visible (and marketable) such as a tiny waist or broad back.

But, as a coach I believe that the most important result of endurance training (i.e. going faster than you want for longer than you want) is the development of mental stamina.  Mental stamina is a mix of determination, discipline, passion, and optimism…traits that can be developed through challenging swim practices…traits that can stay with a person long after the six-pack abs and world-class cardiac output have faded…traits that make it possible to overcome any obstacle and achieve any feat.  

The following quotes come from a variety of sources -- Olympians, U.S. presidents, great writers--and remind me that accomplishing anything, including flying to the moon, requires endurance:  You have to stick with it.  And if you can smile while sticking with it, the journey will be a whole lot more enjoyable.

 
*   “We will go to the moon. We will go to the moon and do other things, not because they are easy but because they are hard.” - John F. Kennedy, Jr.

2    *  “Now bid me run, and I will strive with things impossible.” – Shakespeare, Julius Caesar

3    *   "If one can stick to the training throughout the many long years, then will power is no longer a problem. It's raining? That doesn't matter. I am tired? That's beside the point. It's simply that I just have to." - Emil Zatopek

Emil Zatopek, Olympic Champion

*  “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.” - Calvin Coolidge

5    *  “Come what may, all bad fortune is to be conquered by endurance." --Virgil

6    *  “Endurance is not just the ability to bear a hard thing, but to turn it into glory."  --William Barclay

7    *  “Heroism is endurance for one moment more."  --George Kennan

8    *  "You only ever grow as a human being if you're outside your comfort zone."  --Percy Cerutty

      *  "It is only through work and strife that either nation or individual moves on to greatness.  The great man is always the man of mighty effort, and usually the man whom grinding need has trained to mighty effort." --Theodore Roosevelt 

1    *  "Pain is temporary.  It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place.  If I quit, however, it lasts forever."  --Lance Armstrong

Sian Welsh and Wendy Ingraham crawling to the finish of the 1997 Hawaii Ironman.