By Lauren Williams, Swimming World College Intern
The New Year is here and with that comes New Year’s Resolutions, and Bowdoin Swimming certainly has its fair share. After months of developing bad habits, it is time to start all over and find those little things that need improvement.
That is something Bowdoin head coach Brad Burnham stresses to his swimmers every year: try something new.
“We expect a lot from every single member of the team,” Burnham said. “I am interested in coaching swimmers who want to try new things.so they can swim races they haven’t swum before because that is the only way they will swim a best time.”
Burnham who has coached the Polar Bears since 2000, also believes in the team supporting each other and being enthusiastic about the tasks that they are completing.
“They have a lot going on and we realize that but when they decide to walk onto deck they should be ready to swim,” he said. “We expect them to venture out of their comfort zones on a regular basis. We expect them to support each other as they work toward the individual and team goals.”
One of those goals is to have “48% improvement.” The head coach understands that college is a stressful environment, but he expects that everyone on the team wants to have have better times at the end of the season. With 48 members on the team’s roster, Burnham expects each member to have 1% improvement.
“As you know it is difficult to improve throughout your collegiate career with all the things that come your way at places like this,” Burnham said. “Or next year if we have 51 people on the team it will be 52%. Those are lifetime bests not season bests and very rarely happens.”
Burnham tries to set realistic goals for his team. He wants to be sure that his team focuses on things that they control.
“We also want to send a group to NCAA’s and score a ton of points at the conference meets but those are dependent goals and hard to keep in our control,” Burnham said.
As New England Small Colleges Athletic Conference Championships inch closer, the new year’s resolutions the team set will be put into place.