While the majority of Lawrence students were relaxing at home over the month-long break, the Lawrence University Swim Team was hard at work on campus preparing for the rest of their season.
The team practiced in the pool Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays both in the morning and the afternoon. Tuesdays and Thursdays they lifted weights in the morning and swam in the afternoons. If that was not enough, they also do yoga together on Fridays.
What does a typical swim practice consist of? Junior swimmer Chelsea Hameister commented, “Our typical practices start out with the entire team warming up together, and maybe a kick or technique set before we hit our main workout, where we split up into our specialties. Distance will do their own set and focus on longer stuff, middle distance and sprint freestylers will get together and do their workout to focus on their sprints and building endurance and stroke specialists will split up depending on their stroke and do their respective workouts.”
Even though they always seemed to be practicing, LUST did get to enjoy their break as well. In addition to movies and lots of nap time, the team members took part in a fun team Olympics!
“We split up into four smaller teams and competed against each other in things like volleyball, ultimate Frisbee and other competitions to try [to] win overall. Usually the winning team wins a morning practice off for when we’re back to school for Winter Term, which is way more exciting than it sounds,” Hameister explained.
The team only had one meet over break, which was against UW-Oshkosh. Though Lawrence did not come out on top, it was still a close competition.
Sophomore Nick Craker said, “As a team we didn’t win the meet, but we had a ton of individual victories, whether it was winning a race or having a personal or season best times.”
To add to that Hameister also stated, “We took first in a bunch of events, but they had enough people to take 2nd and 3rd to score more points overall in the events. Oshkosh is a larger team than us, and they were on a mid-season taper, while we were all beat up from our hard practices from winter training, so that didn’t help either.”
Despite the loss, two swimmers really stood out at the meet. When Craker was asked who he believed MVP of the meet was, he stated, “I would say one of our fearless leaders Evan Flack. He had a number of great swims and was out there at the end of our lanes cheering everyone on.”
For Hameister, the MVP award went to sophomore Taylor Winter. “She won both the 500 and 1,650 freestyles and set the pool record by over 10 seconds in the 1,650 (the mile).”
Winter already is a record holder for Lawrence, having the fastest time in the 500m race-a title she earned her freshman year!
With all their hard work over break, LUST has high hopes for the rest of their season. Sadly there are no more home games this season, but we wish the team good luck on their upcoming meet at the University of Chicago Jan. 11 and 12.