From The Deck
Nov 3, 2004 | Women's Swimming and Diving
Nov. 2, 2004
Greetings,
We have concluded weeks 9 and 10 of the season and we have made a lot of progress. I mean A LOT of progress.
The longer I coach, the more convinced I become of the power of positive thinking and the importance of staying off the emotional rollercoasterthat a season can present to the student-athletes. Our sport is really one of faith and confidence. Faith in one's self and confidence in one's self. We are not a sport of instant gratification. We sometimes wait months, or even seasons, for a good performance. So what keeps them going during all the hard training and the potential sub-par performances? Faith and confidence!
I am happy to say that we have the ability, as a team, to get through the tough stuff without getting "mental," and for the most part, we don't need to be "convinced" that we are heading in the right direction. We just believe. Most of our ladies just handle the tiring or challenging days as just a normal thing, and likewise, they handle their average performances with a certain calm. If you deal with those days with drama and frustration, then you are setting yourself up for failure. Instead, if you just maintain an even temperament and avoid the emotional rollercoaster every week, then you usually free yourself physically and mentally to have a better than expected performance and practice. That is exactly what happened to us this past week and weekend!
Week nine was a really big transition week for us. We moved into a new training phase in the weight room (power and endurance phases) and we finally hit our full volume in the pool. We really put it to them, and we were very pleased with how many of them handled themselves. Lots of self confidence was evident last week in training. Maturity and emotional intelligence reigned for the most part. For those that just handled the ups and downs with calm and reason, they were able to really bust out and have a good week of training in week 10. That in turn, lead to a fantastic weekend of races! It really does all begin with the mind!
The results from our weekend meet versus University of Arkansas and University of New Orleans are posted on here on the website for you all to review. It was fantastic! It was one of those days that comes along now and then, when as a team, you can almost do no wrong and everyone can feel it. It is just a feeling of superiority and confidence, and it is incredibly empowering to those that simply allowed the moment to take over and left all their insecurities behind. What a fantastic moment in time! I wish I could have frozen those two hours and bottled it up for later use. Those weekends don't come often, so it is important to really enjoy them when they do. During a season, there are two or three meets that just seem to be almost flawless - when all the positive training and positive thinking just collide into one fantastic team effort. We had one of those this past weekend and it was a rush!
I was very proud of how we conducted ourselves and how we stepped up to the moment and calmly took control of that meet. We actually lost the first two events, but we never faltered. We just "stayed the course" and believed that we could beat a very good SEC team that was coming off a big win over LSU on Friday. We won the third event and then lost the fourth, then won the fifth and sixth and lost the seventh and eight. We only won three of the first eight events! Yet we knew all along we were going to win this meet. We did not need to be convinced - we just knew! Talk about strength of character! We have it!
Our goal is to win the conference championship. Is it a tall order for a second-year team in this strong C-USA? You bet it is. But we believe in ourselves and in each other, and we back that belief up with good tough training. This is our year and we know it, and we are willing to step up and claim it! If we reach our goal, then we know we will have earned it as we did this weekend. If we fall short, then we will all be able to say it was a great and fun journey, and we will know that we aspired to something special and we did it together as a team!
I hope you enjoy the ride as much as we do!
Roll Wave!
