Experience. Its not something you can just go out and get. It takes time, it takes failures, and more importantly it takes learning from failures. The goal tonight was to gain experience in several different areas.
One aspect was pressure - how does someone perform when we’re counting on them to come through. Against Hope last week we were wholly dependant on our superstars but lost out on a lot of races for second or third or even fifth. Conference titles aren’t won with superstars though, they’re won by a team of guys fighting, scratching, and clawing their way into the points. So tonight we left eight of our guys back to practice and went south with a skeleton squad to see how people would respond when we were counting on them.
We also wanted to get some other guys racing experience in new or different events. The meet was swum in short course meters so times didn’t matter inasmuch as racing skills and technique. In fact, I didn’t bother to take splits and just sat in the lifeguard chair (not much deck space) and watched and took notes.
From a competitive standpoint, we’d grade out with a ’C’ tonight. We swam well in places, but also had several mental lapses throughout the meet.
Grading the experience - we’d have to take an “incomplete”. We’ve got a lot of things to work on between now and the end of the year. The grade will come out when we find out what we’ve learned from tonight. For now though, we’ll take the “W”.
One aspect was pressure - how does someone perform when we’re counting on them to come through. Against Hope last week we were wholly dependant on our superstars but lost out on a lot of races for second or third or even fifth. Conference titles aren’t won with superstars though, they’re won by a team of guys fighting, scratching, and clawing their way into the points. So tonight we left eight of our guys back to practice and went south with a skeleton squad to see how people would respond when we were counting on them.
We also wanted to get some other guys racing experience in new or different events. The meet was swum in short course meters so times didn’t matter inasmuch as racing skills and technique. In fact, I didn’t bother to take splits and just sat in the lifeguard chair (not much deck space) and watched and took notes.
From a competitive standpoint, we’d grade out with a ’C’ tonight. We swam well in places, but also had several mental lapses throughout the meet.
Grading the experience - we’d have to take an “incomplete”. We’ve got a lot of things to work on between now and the end of the year. The grade will come out when we find out what we’ve learned from tonight. For now though, we’ll take the “W”.