By Katie Lively, Swimming World College Intern
When you swim full time with a team, you don’t really think about all its little quirks until you leave for an extended period of time. That’s one of the interesting things about going off to college—and then coming home again. The team you thought you knew like no other suddenly has a few idiosyncrasies that emerge when you finally return for summer vacation.
While this is far from a comprehensive list, here are a few unexpected things to expect upon your return:
1. Your club coach’s sets kick your butt in a different way.
Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
I spent most of my freshman year trying to decide who gave harder workouts: my college coach or my club coach. Now that I’m home, I realize that I was comparing apples and oranges.
My college coach introduced me to weight training for the first time, gave me far more fly sets than I was used to, and packed more yardage into each practice than my club coach does. However, my club coach gives fewer breaks, has every person practice every stroke, and holds the well-executed philosophy of: “We don’t count our yards. We make our yards count.”
I initially had the mindset that because I’m in college now, I could handle club practice with no problem. I was dead wrong. Although it depends on the club team, the college team, and the level of motivation when swimming for each, swimming for your club team can be every bit as challenging as swimming for your college team. It just hurts in a slightly different way.
2. Not all of your club teammates are as dedicated as your college teammates.
Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
During college season, you probably cringed as your coaches berated teammates who did nothing more than mess up the interval. Once you’re home for the summer, you’ll cringe at all the creative ways your club teammates find to invoke the ire of your coach.
Without the family atmosphere brought about by living on or near the same campus and training almost exclusively with each other, it’s understandable that your club teammates may not exhibit the same level of commitment that you’ve grown used to seeing from your college teammates over the past several months. In high school, most of us swam only for ourselves—or, for an unlucky few, for well-meaning but painfully misguided parents.
In some ways, this isn’t the worst thing in the world. You’ll be swimming with other college swimmers who are as motivated as you are. More than anything, it may be validating to feel like one of the most committed swimmers in the pool.
3. To some of your club teammates, everything is a sprint.
Photo Courtesy: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports
I was just talking with a friend about this while driving her home from practice. She said she often feels confused on drill sets because she thought they were supposed to be about improving our technique, yet people swim as fast on those as they would on an aerobic set.
I had to agree. I can’t count the number of times I have heard some variation of “College swimming really makes you realize just how much club swimmers like to sprint everything.” I also can’t count the number of times my club coach has lectured the team for “just going through the motions” when he has given us generous intervals in an effort to encourage technique work.
I’ve never been able to wrap my mind around the club swimmer fascination with sprinting the warm-up (and the drill set, and the 200 easy between each set). However, most of the ones who do it get over it pretty quickly in college. It is fun to spend a few months swimming with people who seem to know why some sets have faster intervals than others. At the same time, you become forever painfully aware of the ones on your club team who don’t get it.
4. Going from the top of the chain to the bottom and back to the top is surprisingly humbling.
Photo Courtesy: Taylor Brien
Swimmers and non-swimmers alike experience it during fifth, eighth, and 12th grades: the discomfort that comes with being far older (and, if we do say so ourselves, far more mature) than most of the people around us at school. For swimmers, that translates to the pool as the nearly-graduated high school seniors (at least the ones who stick around long enough) spend their last summer before college bonding over the shared question, “Why are we even still here?”
Of course, as we also experienced as students in sixth and ninth grades, there’s an equal discomfort that comes with moving up in the world and falling back into a position of significantly decreased importance. Many of us went from being captains of our high school teams to being relatively average freshmen on our college teams.
Here’s the great thing about swimming that doesn’t apply to school: After a few months, you can go back to being the oldest on the team again—only it’s a lot less awkward the second time. Rather than wondering whether it’s even appropriate to still be hanging around, you’ll now have nine months of new experiences to share with the high schoolers on your club team. Your role becomes so much more meaningful—and you develop far greater empathy for the high school freshmen five years younger than you whom you used to find irritating.
No matter what you discover and how challenging (or easy) it is, going back to your club team will present you with a variety of surprises that have always been there but went unnoticed before you left for several months. Whatever those are, they will likely provide a blend of insight and entertainment to fascinate you all summer long.
Also some college teammates aren’t as dedicated your club teammates.
So true lol
When I was back at the club during summers off from the college team, since I was much older than many of the club swimmers the club coach used me like a swimmer/coach. It helped me quite a bit because I learned more about my own swimming by having to explain technique to others.