Shortened season, no tournaments mean new way of practicing in 2021
By DAVID NAHAN/Sentinel staff
LINWOOD – This winter’s high school swim season won’t culminate in runs for South Jersey or state titles or individual state honors. While that is similar to what is happening with other winter sports without playoffs or tournaments, the difference means a radically changed way of practicing and a different set of goals.
Swimmers typically have long, grueling practices six days a week with the goal of getting them to their peak physical conditioning right in time for championships. They try to win every meet along the way, but there is a performance peak carefully timed for the very end of the season. That is especially true of the top swimmers for teams including Mainland Regional, Ocean City and Egg Harbor Township who hope to shine at the big state meet.
Not this year.
First, their season normally began with weeks of practice leading into meets the first week of December. That was pushed back because of COVID-19 restrictions and concerns to a Feb. 1 start with meets commencing two weeks later.
Practices have been quite different for the different teams as well. While Ocean City boys and girls have had to trade days in the pool at the community’s Aquatic and Fitness Center, teams such as the Mustangs, with their own school pools, have been in the water daily, but not nearly as much.
Although the details by school are different, Mainland Regional girls coach Mike Schiavo summed up what it is like for these athletes in particular.
He considers the Mustang boys and girls among the “luckier” teams because they have their own facility and can swim every day. It’s not the same for them either.
“Normally boys and girls would swim together and we would have marathon practices. We would be in the water (up to) two hours and 20 minutes and then we would do another 45 minutes of dry land afterwards. We’d be working out for close to three hours every day,” Schiavo said.
Because the teams have to be separated to be as socially distanced as possible, they have to practice at different times and only get to be in the water for an hour and a half a day and then not get any dry land practice in.
“Because the season is so short my belief is the body is only going to be able to handle so much,” he said. “Instead of it just breaking down … and not having time to recover with a season that’s normally twice as long, we’re just trying to get our bodies as in shape as possible.” He said that it is physically and mentally easier for his girls.
“They have been in great spirits, number one. They have been able to do what they enjoy doing with those they enjoy doing it with,” he said. “The whole team thing, the whole social aspect of swimming is awesome, but when you don’t have it for a while, any type of social contact, it’s got to be that much more appreciated.”
He said that is making it more fun.
“We’re showing up, we’re swimming smart and hard. And feeling as good as we can, hopefully a little bit better every time so we can swim pretty well every meet instead of waiting for our bodies to feel good two and a half months later at some huge tournament meet or local meet or invitational type thing,” Schiavo said.
So far so good.
As for the mental aspect, he said swimmers’ mind frames have to be different because of the much shorter practice time before and during the season and because they’re comparing themselves to what they were doing last winter.
“It’s tough when you’re used to swimming certain times and you can’t come close to those times right now. It was such a great thing about this sport is that you know if you put in the hard work you will normally drop time. Right now most of the girls aren’t even coming close to their best times. Part of it has to be psychologically frustrating,” Schiavo said.
To deal with that, he advises them to remember “it is what it is.”
“Let’s just try to keep feeling a little bit better and trying to swim a little bit faster than we are now instead of trying to compare yourself to your times from a year ago,” he said. “What did you do two weeks ago? What did you do last week? Let’s start from there. They’re kind of starting from scratch.”
Just happy to be swimming
“To me that’s the bottom line. We get to do it. It’s not ideal,” Schiavo said, but they are building something else.
“By the end of the season you might not look back and say ‘look at all the time I dropped,’ but at the same time we’re still all growing a team environment and we have new kids that we’re trying to bring along,” he said. “We have seniors that we’d like in some ways to celebrate as they go through the shortened season for four tremendous years of contributions.
“We’re just trying to have as much fun as we can,” he said. ”Yes, we’re working hard, but it’s kind of smart hard, with the goal of enjoying the time we get together.”