Swimming April 25, 2008

So according to my coach for the Long Course season of the summer of 2008, we have to attend all practices unless we notify him first. There are many rules that are now applied that weren’t applied to the short course season. I mean we will get kicked out of practice if we breath off the wall, if our streamlines aren’t good, and if we aren’t taking the practice seriously. Monday night Bryan told us a story about some seminar that he went to when he was in Massachusetts. Well this seminar had a coach that apparently told a few stories about some of the swimmers that he has coached and this coaches name is Bob Bowman. Now this coach told a very significant story about several years ago he was coaching a twelve year old boy. Apparently the boy came off of every wall and took a breath off of every wall. This child was a good swimmer and he was quite fast even at his age. When the coach continued to yell at him and he never changed his methods the coach started kicking him out of practice. After about twelve times of being kicked out his parents had arranged a meeting with his coach, him, and his parents, his father being a state trooper at the time. When Bob Bowman had told his parents that the reason for him being kicked out of practice was because he was breathing off the walls and that he thought that by kicking him out of practice that he would get the hint that being kicked out of practice will teach him not to breath off of the wall on the first stroke. Well he came back to practice and never took another breath off the wall again. Today, at this very day, he is training for the Olympics in Beijing. This boy would now be a seven time gold medalist with the name of Michael Phelps. So I think that because Bryan(my coach) heard this that he thinks that because Phelps got faster after he stopped breathing off the wall that we will do the same. Maybe we won’t go as far with our swimming career maybe we will, who knows. Although I’m not sure what to make of these new rules. Another new rule is that if you don’t show up to practice without notifying him of where you are and what you are doing, you do have a chance of being kicked off the team. Part of me thinks this is good, and the other part of me thinks that this whole experience is going to be extremely hard, but well worth it in the end.