College Recruit Rankings Profile: Six-Star Spindrift Beck, Class of 2009

PHOENIX, Arizona, May 29. ONE of our favorite names in the business, Spindrift Beck of the Dallas Mustangs and The Hockaday School, is next up in Swimming World's College Recruit Rankings profile series.

Beck, who is a six-star star in the Swimming World College Recruit Rankings powered by Take Your Marks, is coached by Bobby Patten at The Hockaday School and Mook Rhodenbaugh at Dallas Mustangs .

As seen in her personally-updated profile, she will be one of the top recruits in next year's class. The strong breaststroker already has times that would have qualified her for the 2008 NCAA Championship A Finals in the 100 (1:00.66) and 200 (2:10.51) breaststroke events.

She recently chatted with Swimming World as seen in the following interview:

Where and when did you start swimming?
I started swimming at my country club when I was about 5 or 6. My mom is a big golfer, so she'd drop me and my brother off there for a few hours in the summer while she played on the course nearby. I swam for that country club team for a couple of years and then joined my current team, the Dallas Mustangs, when I was 6. I've been there ever since.

Who would you name as the most influential person and coach in your swimming career?
My club coach, Mook Rhodenbaugh, is the most influential person in my swimming career. I've been swimming in his group for about 4 years now, and every day (well, almost 🙂 ) I find myself looking forward to going to practice. He always knows just what to say in any situation and is the most effective motivator I know. I'm very lucky to have someone with his knowledge and love of the sport coaching me.

What, to this point, is your best moment in the sport and why?
I was fortunate enough to be selected to the National Junior Team last year ('06 – '07), and I think my best moment in the sport would have to be the trip to Junior Pan Pacs in Hawaii that we took as a team. There weren't very many of us on the team that year and, as a result, we became an extremely tight-knit group (we had a lot of dance parties at the Olympic Training Center that I guess we're rather infamous for 🙂 haha).

I consider many of them to be very close friends and we try to keep in contact regularly by phone or Internet. Aside from the friendship aspect, I was lucky enough to be voted a team captain by the group which meant leading cheers for Team USA and really getting involved in the whole "swimming for your country!" mentality, which was amazing. The whole experience was pretty life-changing and I think we all came home from Hawaii very different people with many more and loftier goals for ourselves.

Walk us through a week of practice:
On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday's, I've got practice from 5:45 to 7:00 a.m. These are usually a little lighter on the yardage, but more intense in terms of speed and technique work. On Tuesday mornings, I'm at practice with my high school team from 5:30 to 7:15, which is more of the same.

Every afternoon, I have practice from 5:00 to 7:30. We usually alternate days with about 30 – 45 minutes of either dryland or weight lifting before getting in the water, which keeps things interesting and fun. We train in a pool with massive stadium steps around the pool, so we wind up doing a lot of stair runs! Within these 5 weekly afternoon practices, usually there are 2 days of mostly freestyle, 2 days of mostly IM, and 1 day of mostly stroke specialty. We usually do a lot of repetition of sets, so we're able to descend our times and judge where we are time-wise each round.

We also have practice on either Saturday or Sunday morning from 10-12.

What is your favorite set?
We've just recently starting doing a cool long course set of:

1×200 breaststroke (175 pace, 25 easy) @ 3:30 interval
2×50's breaststroke (1 pace, 1 all-out sprint) @ 1 minute each
1×150 easy
1x 200 IM (175 pace, 25 easy) @ 3:00 interval
2×50's freestyle (1 pace, 1 all-out sprint) @ 1 minute each
1x 150 easy

Repeat the whole set 5 or 6 times through.

It's not necessarily an extremely difficult set in terms of interval, but it's mostly swum at race-pace, which I like, and is certainly intensity-heavy.

What is your least favorite set?
Definitely our annual New Year's Eve set of 20 x 500's (long course). They're set up differently every year, but usually they're mostly freestyle with intervals that descend until the last 8 or so are pretty much all-out. NOT a fun way to finish Christmas training! 🙂

What are your short-term goals?
I'd like to make it into an A final heat at the Olympic Trials this summer and I'm also going to try to make the World University Games team (qualifying is this summer at U.S. Open). Next fall, I'd like to break a minute in my 100 yard breast.

What are your long-term goals?
Long-term, I'd like to be a part of a NCAA champion college team and hopefully win NCAA's myself in individual races. And, like I'm sure everyone says, my biggest goal is to make the Olympic team someday.

We always hear people talking about how cool Spindrift is for a first name. Can you explain its origin?
I'm named after my aunt (my dad's sister) who currently lives in London, England. Her name was Pamela, but she was very much a free spirit and decided to legally change her name to Spindrift (at age 16) when she read about it in a book. "Spindrift" is basically the seaspray that comes off of a wave in the ocean when it's really windy (it looks sort of foggy, and it's kind of a rare thing to see). No one in my family ever swam, so the name and its water connection wasn't intentional, but it's worked out really well for me!

To be eligible to be featured in this series, please make sure you create a new profile, or request to take over your admin-created account in the Swimming World College Recruit Rankings powered by Take Your Marks. Click here for information on how to do so.

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