By Emma Miller, Swimming World College Intern.
“Skyy was established in 2010, in September. In the six and a half years that we’ve been established… oh, here we go,” said Skyy Swim Team’s head coach Erin Miller with a playful sigh. Two of her swimmers, 16-year-old Alec and 18-year-old Kyle Balasny, had burst out laughing, disrupting the group of eight swimmers and sending everyone into giggles.
“This is just like when we went to yoga!” exclaimed 17-year-old Shannon Coccaro. Everyone all at once began shouting out the story of how the Balasny brothers – unsurprisingly – disrupted an otherwise silent yoga class, much to the dismay of the instructor.
It was the night before the first session of the 2017 EZ Speedo Sectionals in Ithaca, N.Y. and the atmosphere in the hotel was unlike one you would typically see in a room with eight elite athletes and their coach.
“But – seriously this time – in six and a half years, we have eight kids at this meet, and that’s just as much or, in some cases, more than what other teams have,” Miller continued. “I’m very happy we’re all at this level. It’s not quite where I want to be. I want to be doing better, but we’re in the building process still so these guys have come a long way just to be at this level.”
As Miller began to say earlier, Skyy was founded in 2010 and has since grown to 148 swimmers. A former ASCA Age Group Coach of the Year as a part of New Jersey Wave, Miller became acclimated to coaching high-level athletes but had to start from scratch in her team’s earlier years.
Photo Courtesy: Emma Miller
“My first year with Skyy, I always laugh, but it was basically glorified swim lessons,” Miller said with a chuckle. “I had kids trying out for the team our first season who didn’t even have a bathing suit. They had to try out wearing a T-shirt and shorts. One swimmer showed up wearing scuba goggles.
“I had to really dig deep and remember how to teach again,” she continued. “I was used to being able to just give a set and focus on the training aspect of swimming, and I really had to go back to my teaching roots. I honestly think it’s made me a better coach.”
Since then, Skyy has grown not only in size but in caliber. Lucas Morgan was the team’s first and only Sectionals qualifier in 2012, where he made finals in both the 100 and 200 breaststroke. In the years since, that number has grown from one swimmer to two, from two swimmers to eight. The swimmers agree that there is a stark contrast between swimming on larger, more established teams and swimming on Skyy.
“If you’re not good, then they’re not gonna look at you, they’re not gonna train you,” said 15-year-old Victoria Saliba, who trained with a larger team in the North Jersey area before coming to Skyy in its first year. Saliba had eight Sectionals cuts headed into Ithaca.
“It’s different coming from a bigger team and then coming here. There, you have thirty kids in one lane and now there’s five kids a lane,” Coccaro said.
“I do that on purpose. I think of what I would want to do as a swimmer,” Miller explained. Miller herself was a swimmer growing up, graduating from Indian River State College in 1990. As a member of IRSC’s swim team, Miller ranked second in the NJCAA in the women’s 200 fly and won back-to-back national team titles in 1989 and 1990. She uses her experience as a swimmer to shape the format of her team as well as her workouts, particularly the early morning practices with her elite group known as the “Big Bangs.”
“Our favorite practices are probably Thursday mornings when we each get our own sets,” Coccaro said, the other swimmers murmuring in agreeance.
“Those are the days when you feel yourself getting better, when she gives you a set that you know is meant for you,” Alec said. “Honestly, any time you get specialized workouts, it makes you want to be better. It’s not the same when a coach is saying, ‘10x500s, ready, go.'”
“We were trained very differently, but I hated the fact that I had to swim fly with 10 people in a lane,” Miller said. “I want to make it worth their while. I want them to love swimming. Those early mornings, sometimes we’ll have a lighter set, sometimes we’ll do technique. It’s not always about the work, it’s about each person getting better.”
Photo Courtesy: Erin Miller
Another unique weekly workout on Skyy is “Warp Speeds,” where a select group of swimmers works specifically on sprinting. Miller was inspired by Ultra Short Race Pace Training, a training method made famous by 2016 World Champion Michael Andrew that focuses on speed rather than yardage.
“Warp Speeds was also my idea because I noticed a lot of them weren’t showing signs of being great sprinters,” Miller said. “They were still doing a lot of distance, but I saw that [Alec] had great natural speed. Instead of making him do 10x500s that he’s going to hate and not gonna want to do well, I wanted to come up with this alternate workout.”
The Balasny brothers had only ever been summer swimmers before joining Skyy in 2011. Since then, their improvement has been rapid.
“In all honesty, those first few years, we really weren’t good and we still worked on it,” Alec said. “It’s the work we did when we were bad, and yet we still came every day. That’s what made us better.”
“It’s about making a commitment to wanting to be better,” Kyle explained. “It’s saying, ‘I’m gonna be good’ and working really hard both inside and outside of the pool, just to be the best you can be. It’s 10 percent physical, 90 percent mental.”
Coccaro described that she went also through changes when she first joined Skyy.
“I did not want to swim anymore. The first two weeks on Skyy, I was making every excuse under the sun so I could get out of the pool and not swim,” Coccaro admitted. “Then Erin pulled me out of the pool and had a talk with me and I was like, ‘Alright, this is a coach that really cares about me.’ She wanted me to succeed and that made me want to succeed, too.”
“Starting over with Skyy, I didn’t realize how hard it was going to be but it’s also more rewarding,” Miller said. “Working with a kid for three or four years and seeing them go from first-time club swimmers to making JOs and Zones, it’s definitely more rewarding.
“If you give me 100 percent, I don’t care if you’re bronze. If you give me everything you got, I’ll give you everything I got,” Miller continued. “All of these kids here, they give me everything. I never drive to the pool not wanting to be there.”
“I do,” Matt Tieleman, a 16-year-old Sectionals qualifier, muttered under his breath. Once again, the room erupted in laughter.
Photo Courtesy: Emma Miller