Members of the University of Tampa swim team put forth great effort in competition, but it may be the preparation in practice and on their own that makes them successful.
“You need to not be afraid to work longer than any other team on UT athletics. I mean our season is longer than anyone else’s,” said junior Spartan Andrew Johnson. “We swim in all forms of weather; it doesn’t matter if it’s rain, snow, sleet, [or] hurricane, we’re swimming.”
Sophomore David Humphrey echoed Johnson, as he points out that swimming is almost unnatural.
“Everyone can run, everyone can jump, [but] swimming’s not something humans can do naturally. You have to teach yourself,” he said.
Another thing the swimmers agreed upon was time commitment on the swim team involves a lot of sacrifice.
“Tired days, tired nights. You lose winter break. We leave Dec. 20 and have to be back Dec. 31,” Shane Armbrister, a former UT swimmer said.
Coach Ed Brennan, who has spent 30 years at UT, is always impressed with he dedication of his team.
“It’s a very long season and these kids give up a tremendous amount to be swimmers. You can’t be just an average UT student and really be a swimmer,” he said. “A lot of them try but those are the ones that don’t make it.
They can’t do a lot of things that some of these kids do. Sunday is their [only] day off.”
Sophomore Kevin Kelley discussed additional sacrifies that UT swimmers must make.
“[You] gotta know that you’re going to lose a lot sleep. Also, be prepared to eat a lot more food, which is not necessarily a bad thing because you’re going to burn it off the next day,” he said.
The number one aspect that cannot be underestimated is the importance of practice and training.
“The NCAA allows you to train for 20 hours a week; we’re generally around 18 and a half,” Coach Brennan said.
“As it is, the kids train five mornings a week 6:30-7:30 a.m. and they come back every afternoon Monday through Thursday 3:00-5:00 p.m. On Friday it’s 2:30-5:00 p.m. and on Saturday it’s 9 a.m. until we finish. They’re swimming on an average of about four miles in the afternoon and two in the morning.”
The swim team does not always practice at the UT pool either.
“This past Saturday we drove out to Fort DeSoto and we swam 3.5 miles in the Gulf of Mexico, which for pool swimmers is very tough. They’ll swim that much every afternoon but they got a black line to go straight and they’re not swallowing sea water or worrying about waves or all kinds of things like that,” Brennan said.
Coach Brennan sees people come to the pool for rehabilitation, or for different training exercises and realize the struggles that come with swimming.
“It’s hard to understand until you do it. They get in the pool and start swimming up and down. It’s pretty difficult. Sometimes the strength coaches will bring other teams over to swim or people will come over for rehab and they start to get a real appreciation for what it is,” he said.
“It’s one thing to sit on a pool deck. You come down here on Friday and they’ll be out for a whole two and a half hour practice and watch it. They see it, but they really can’t appreciate it until they try to do two and a half hours of it themselves. It’s a lot of swimming, especially the pace these kids swim at.”
More than just physical training, the team also endures difficult mental training.
“There’s mental training everyday when you get up at 6 a.m. That’s your mental training. Just getting here everyday is training themselves mentally,” Coach Brennan said.
“The real mental toughness has to come from them. We set some pretty tough standards. They’re not allowed to come a minute late. If they come a minute late [and] they don’t get in, they’re out.”
Armbrister points out that the importance of practice can be understood by a sign hanging over the swim office door that reads “One performs as one practices.”
If that’s true, then the swim team really could prove the old cliché: “practice makes perfect.”
April Weiner can be reached at april.weiner@spartans.ut.edu.