December 15, 2008


BREAKING NEWS: Carthage men's swimming qualifies two relays for the NCAA Division III Championship meet. The Red Men placed both the 800 freestyle relay and the 400 freestyle relay under the NCAA automatic qualifying time.

At this point you are probably wondering to yourself, what?! how did this happen?! the Red Men are in Florida on training trip, they don't have any meets this week, and why isn't Coach Greg telling me about this? why am I getting this news from some punk freshman?

Well, in order to understand what happened, lets go back to the beginning of the day, Day 2. The day started out normally, wake up call at 6:00 am. Continental Breakfast in the lobby, and then it was off to the pool. Here is where things get interesting: part of the way there, all four vans pulled over and the team was instructed to run the remaining two miles to practice. Upon arrival the team split into groups for a tough hour plus dryland session. For the water portion of practice we split into stroke groups. Pelka, Glover, and I swam the distance workout. It was a typical distance set: 5400 total yards, 2200 of it red, all sandwiched between Tom trying to do math, gripes about the sprinters, negotiations with the girls on how to best split our lane of seven people, and more swimming. For once, the distance swimmers got out first, but we were told we had to wait till everyone else was done because we were taking a team picture. Let me say that again, the DISTANCE SWIMMERS GOT DONE FIRST. The picture was pretty crazy, everyone was trying to tread water in close quarters, and let's just say things got a little out of control.

In between practices a few people headed to the beach, but most of us stayed at the hotel and slept and rested. In my room, everyone got in a nap of at least two hours. Good times. However, all good things must pass, and before we knew it, it was time again for swim practice. After warm up, Greg got us out of the pool. We were to swim a "Get in" swim. We had to come up with two relays that had to be swum under the NCAA "A" cut by whatever means necessary. We chose to swim the 800 free relay and the 400 free relay and divide them by 50s instead of 200s or 100s. The catch was to be "prepared for the unexpected" as Greg explained. The unexpected consisted of Varner having to take his fins off, and the Van Huis brothers having to swim 75s instead of 50s. Despite the added complications both relays swam well under the NCAA time. We may not have actual qualified those relays, but it was a lot of fun seeing the whole team cheer Glover as he swam the last 50 of the 800 relay. The team seems very determined to qualify relays this year. The rest of practice was tough as well, but the distance group once again fought through and finished first....AGAIN. It is days like today that prove how well the team is coming together. Helping each other and encouraging each other through the most difficult day of training trip so far. After what the team did at TYR and the progress we are making over training trip, I'm really excited to see just how far we can go with the team this season. The rest of training trip promises to be a challenge, but not one that we can't handle. For now, though, I'm going to eat the rest of my dinner before bed.

Cheers!
-Eric Ross

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