I hope all of you enjoyed your spring break, and had a good week away from school and the pool. Today we enter the final phase of our season, which will involve fine tuning the strokes and turns for your upcoming summer season. We will also include some training sets so that you do not lose the base that we have established. This week we will work a lot of free and back as most of you have been away from the pool for 10 days.UPCOMING WEEK: Practice resumes today at normal times. The rest of the week we will have all practices as scheduled, including Saturday (6:30 am-8:00 am)
UPCOMING MEETS: There is a long course meet being held on May 16 and 17 for any of you who would like to try this type of meet. Only the Senior Prep or Junior II groups should enter this one.
2009 AWARDS: As you know our team banquet is coming up and that means that as coaches we are asked to go through our groups and decide on awards. For myself this time of a season always brings mixed emotions as I struggle with making these decisions. This is one of the things I got to do over spring break as I had my list of pro and cons for each swimmer in my groups as I went through this lengthy process, and will hand them to Heather today. When I make these decisions I know undoubtedly there will be some sad faces and hurt feelings, but each decision that I made was made with a lot of thought, and does not mean anything except that these swimmers did what was as asked of them as set forth in the group description, and in most cases made that extra effort.
THE THREE AWARDS ARE:
MOST VALUABLE: This honor is bestowed upon the best performing athlete in the Senior Prep and the Junior II groups throughout the season. I look at the meets that these swimmers swam in and their overall performance in their events and how that reflected our entire groups. I also looked at practice attendance and how they performed in practice as that will end reflect performance which will reflect our groups again. The last thing that I looked at was did they meet the requirements of the group as sated in the "group descriptions." COACHES AWARD: This honor is bestowed upon the athlete that I would take in any activity and build a group around. This athlete has demonstrated a true love for the sport through their dedication and the respect that they show to teammates, competition, and their coaches. This athlete has a work ethic that as a coach I appreciate and would I hope be contagious to others within the group. I do look at meets that these swimmers participated in, performance at those meets, and attitudes at the meet. I again looked at practice participation and was an effort made to meet the requirements of the group. MOST IMPROVED: This honor is bestowed upon the athlete who has made great strides during the season. While I do look at events and times at meets, for this award what is more important is attitude. At practice is the attitude toward the sport improved and does this athlete take information about stroke corrections given by the coach and perform them better in the pool. It is this last thing that will decide how far an athlete will progress past their "given talent." Let's face it if they have been listening and making the corrections than the improvement should shine in meets.WHERE DO WE GO NOW! 
As a group we had a great season with many personal best turned in during Championship Week, and many records broken. Some of you may be asking What do we do now? Same old Thing Wrong! Now is the time when each of you should do a little soul searching and evaluate your training and the outcomes that occurred so you are in a better position to move forward, I know I have!
As a group we had a great season with many personal best turned in during Championship Week, and many records broken. Some of you may be asking What do we do now? Same old Thing Wrong! Now is the time when each of you should do a little soul searching and evaluate your training and the outcomes that occurred so you are in a better position to move forward, I know I have!Here is some food for thought! Our training has been anywhere from 60% to 95% (100% is very hard to attain and if you do what then). Anything in the 60's would be failing in school, right? When you evaluate yourself on this scale consider the following; The most significant of all excellence is technique, repetition of excellent technique to be more precise. Streamlines, proper breakouts, and body position are but a few however how often are YOU performing these items with excellence. Are your hands entering the water properly? Are you breathing every three? How often must you be asked to do something? Techniques refers to movements and actions. Everyone can significantly improve technical repetition and it begins with one item at a time.
Training refers to each practice and what is required within that practice, one at a time and each individual's level of motivation to perform with enthusiasm. We know that our sport requires training improvements in endurance, strength race strategies and techniques. Mental toughness is the key to motivation as we strive daily to improve our work ethic. Mental toughness is having the natural or developed edge that enables you to cope better than your competitors with the many demands that are placed on you as a student athlete. Key characteristics of mentally tough athletes are, Self belief-an ability to believe that you will succeed, Focus-to be able to switch on your focus and remain focused in the face of many distractions, Composure-accept that anxiety is going to happen and know you can cope with it. The key is to condition your mind to think confidently and be able to overcome frustration and self critical talk. This has to happen daily in practice before you can expect to use it at meet. Many in our group have never come anywhere close to personal best times in practice due to lack of effort.
So what is stopping us from practicing with a more intense effort? I may be wrong but I believe that today's athlete does not associate work with the idea of FUN. If you have ever watch Peyton Manning running an offense or Tiger Woods making those shots, don, t forget that they are very technical athletes who rely on that technique for their success, and they are probably having fun in practice to make those hours more enjoyable.
How close to 100% can we get? MIKE
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