USA National Junior Team to Race the Best This Week, Will Learn Invaluable Lessons from Michael Phelps

Editorial by Jeff Commings, SwimmingWorld.TV associate producer

PHOENIX, Arizona, November 9. THIS week, 46 members of the USA Swimming junior national team will get some much-needed international experience as they race at the Stockholm and Berlin legs of the FINA World Cup.

Joining them on this mini-tour will be Michael Phelps, who will act as an ambassador and team leader of sorts as they swim in their first competition against international Olympians and world record holders. Their experiences this week will be similar to the ones I had as a member of the 1989-1990 national junior team, when Matt Biondi and Tom Jager offered up immeasurable insight on race preparation during our trips to Paris and East Berlin.

If there was a superstar equivalent to Michael Phelps in 1990, Jager and Biondi jointly shared that title. Their friendly rivalry in the 50 freestyle made headlines for nearly five years and drew kids into the sport of swimming at an amazing rate. Unlike this year's junior team, we were unaware that world record holders from the United States would be attending the same meet as us. (In addition to Phelps, Jessica Hardy and Peter Marshall are just a couple of the other top Americans scheduled to swim this week.)

So when we saw Jager and Biondi walk into the pool facility in Paris and drop their gear in our section, we were stunned into silence. Most of us forgot about our own swims because we were too wrapped up in the fact that two of the world's best athletes were sitting a few feet away!

Jager and Biondi had many years of experience as captains of national teams, and we got lengthy pep talks before finals and learned some of the cheers the Americans used at the 1988 Olympics. Just spending time with us was above and beyond what Jager and Biondi had to do. Unlike Phelps, Jager and Biondi were not contractually obligated to hang out with a bunch of teenagers. To see them do so removed any preconceived notions that Olympic champions and world record holders had little time and interest in speaking to a junior national team. We learned about the pride that goes into being a part of the USA Swimming national team. We understood the responsibility that goes with traveling to a foreign country. And best of all, we figured out by watching Biondi and Jager that even Olympic champions can have fun at a swim meet and still swim ridiculously fast.

Mingling with Biondi and Jager played a small part in our future successes in the pool. This was our first experience as members of a national team, but we already knew we wanted to continue to be a part of something that Jager and Biondi described as unique and permanent. Their words and presences in that week made impressions that stuck with us for many years. Six swimmers on my first junior national team – Brad Bridgewater, Josh Davis, Joe Hudepohl, Trina Jackson, Kristine Quance and Ashley Tappin – all won Olympic gold medals in 1992, 1996 and 2000. Almost all of us got to experience the joys of representing the United States at the Olympics, World Championships, Pan Pacific championships, Pan American Games or World University Games.

Like Jager and Biondi 19 years ago, there is no better blueprint for race preparation than Michael Phelps. I'm sure all the kids on the junior team are excited to get away from school for a week, but I hope they soak up everything Professors Phelps and Bowman teach them, and bring it back home as they prepare to become the future stars of USA Swimming.

Jeff Commings was a member of two junior national teams, as well as three USA Swimming national B teams from 1989 to 1994.

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