A Look Back – Chapter I – The Road Is Long

Things may come to those who wait, but only the things left by those who hustle. ~Abraham Lincoln

If you’re playing football and your opponent runs the opening kickoff back for a touchdown, do you end the game right there?

If you get a new car for your birthday and reverse it into a telephone poll, do you just buy a new car?

If you get fired from your job, do you stay content on the unemployment circuit?

This 2008-2009 swim season for the Davidson Wildcats, packed with many great stories and sensational results, was not always filled with sunshine, cupcakes and walk-off home runs. The sport is unique for in multitude of ways, not the least of which combines individual with team goals, young men with women on the same but separate units, and having an off-season as long as your average weekend sleep-in. The pitfalls that accompanied the Cats did not define who the group was. The journey through the struggle did.

Those struggles came in many forms – physically, mentally, and psychologically. Hell, one of the kids on the team earned the moniker “struggle” for his propensity to lose track of time and priority. The physical hurdles speak for themselves – tougher practice regiments, lifting routines that left each athlete dripping with sweat, new training techniques (i.e. spinning, ninja room) that strengthened the swimmers more than they had bargained. Combine the 6AM start time, doubling three times/week and managing the strains, pulls and tears that injury can wear on an athlete, and you have a recipe fit for The Biggest Loser, the Junior Navy Seals or your average collegiate swim program.

Mentally, it’s no walk in the park. The aforementioned tasks should never be viewed as tasks if you want to continue up-keeping your varsity pastime as a pastime and not a job. Yes, the majority of the American public is not lining the streets to put themselves through this type of rigidity. The team, though, firmly plants itself in this fire and that inferno blazed out-of-control as soon as we set foot on campus for the start of the season. The pitfalls that ensued could not be scripted by anyone outside of the science-fiction movie business. Davidson College unfurls plenty of challenges and while it is/was unwise and unnecessary to self-inflect more pain, it is/was inevitable. This, indeed, was biggest mountain to climb – could we handle it mentally – not just the workload, but ourselves, each other and the price of defined success?

“There are two key areas of interest in sports psychology: understanding how psychology can be applied to improve motivation and performance and understanding how sports and athletics can improve mental health and overall well-being.” Great definition – I see the word “improve” twice or, in my mind, “taking bad situations and using them as fuel, not toxins.” This is perpetually the case with swimming, not just with Davidson but with any team that looks to accomplish something – to go in a direction that points towards promise and not just because that’s where the compass leads you.

And so it began, the final week in August straight through the middle of May encompassing what amounted to the entire academic calendar. The Cats were never far from the pool, even if the only time apart from each other came during holiday breaks, never lasting more than 10 days or so. Captains’ practices lead to coaches’ practices, increasing in intensity with every week, straight through the middle of November. Along the way, we had swimmers thrown out of practice for language, suspensions ranging from tyranny to inadequacies with “finding themselves,” injury bugs and rehabilitations, and countless hours of fatigue. Tears were shed, wiped away, and then shed again when no one was looking or under reflective goggles. Lines were drawn in the sand with regard to viewpoints and hard work never seemed to be as newsworthy to the squad as it should have. December bore a need for stringent discipline in the classroom and in competition, which gave way to January’s grind, February’s showcase and the spring’s chance for choices.

But that’s the beauty of swimming. It’s a lot like playing ball for Bob Knight or working for Donald Trump. You learn from your shortcomings and, with the right sense of purpose and determination, you come out a stronger, tougher individual. I’m sure Knight didn’t stop practice every time one of his players took a charge or made an unselfish pass, but in the back of his mind, he probably made a mental notation – “I like what I see there.” Personally, I love practice and that will never change as long as I coach. There was always a remarkable underlining every time we met as a group. Those brightest moments came to those that sought opportunity in every set and setback – taking a situation, using it as fuel.

I can write with confidence that the 2008-2009 Wildcats are better swimmers, people, and ambassadors of the sport and school because of what they went through and put themselves through this season. It was not always pretty. It was not always fun. But those moments that can be dubbed “remarkable” can be encapsulated by each individual. Listening to them recount the season, from their vantage point, is a true treat, a ride that, at its toughest, probably didn’t seem worth taking. In retrospective, it was worth every yard.

Next entry: The Schedule