Column:

A day at the pool

By Mark Levitt

Published June 4, 2008

Nothing is better than spending a day at the pool, right? There’s something for everybody. Kids splash their friends. Some cool off on a hot summer day. Others like to lie out and tan. Then there’s the MU girls’ swimming team.

If you want a different perspective on “relaxing at the pool,” stop in the Student Recreation Complex and watch these swimmers practice. I did, and I’m not sure I ever want to swim again.

Any other athlete who claims he or she is the hardest worker on campus is lying. Head coach Brian Hoffer works his girls until they can perform at their peak physical abilities.

“I don’t call them girls,” Hoffer said. “I call them women. We have women on our team.”

With all due respect Coach, there are no women on your team. People can’t do what your team does on a daily basis. You coach machines. Machines who churn out laps the way Aaron Crow deals scoreless innings. Machines who thought informal spring practices were a nice break from the tough summer and fall seasons.

Let me define an “informal” spring practice. Before they ever saw the pool, the machines ran sprints on Stankowski Field, crunched their abdominal muscles for half-an-hour and ran up and down Champions’ Hill. At this point, it was almost time to swim, but first they had to complete 30 burpees.

A burpee is a twisted mix between a push-up and a jumping jack. Whoever invented the idea should be arrested for disturbing the peace of my quadriceps.

After dry-land practice concluded, the team “cools down” from its hard day working out by swimming 6,000 yards. That’s more yards in one afternoon than Chase Daniel had passing, and Jeremy Maclin and Chase Coffman had receiving last season combined.

It was obvious the machines did not enjoy being sorely under-worked throughout the spring. Good thing for them the summer season is underway.

“Once the summer season starts we’ll start doing stuff all out again,” freshman sensation Francie Szostak said back in the spring.

“All out” means adding usual morning practice to the day’s events. It’s tough to fathom how they can survive all spring without the extra 4,000 yards of swimming at 7 a.m. in which to look forward.

The average 10,000 yards of swimming that the machines complete per day during the regular season is equivalent to 5.7 miles. I became tired after just walking from one end of the massive Olympic-sized pool to the other.

At least the hard work has paid big dividends. Their 13-1 record in dual meets this past season was the best in school history.

The success has led to landing a great recruiting class to add to the talented core returning next season. These poor recruits have no idea what they are getting into. All of this begs the question of why anybody would want to go through this Hell under water?

“It’s crazy,” Szostak said. “But we love it.”

Szostak and the rest of the swimmers may be crazy themselves, but it goes to show that no matter who you are, nothing beats spending the day at the pool.