Burned-Out to Reinvigorated: A Coach’s Influence

By Alan Karickhoff, Swimming World College Intern

Before I committed to Dickinson College, I visited the school and had an interview with Coach. I asked a couple of questions about the program at the end of the interview:

“How much do you guys swim a week?” I asked.

“About five days a week. From 4 to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday and the occasional Wednesday morning from 7 to 8 a.m.,” Coach answered.

Wow, this sounds way better than what I’m doing now. No Saturday practice? Only morning practice once a week instead of three? And it’s only an hour instead of an hour and forty five? Does that mean no more setting my alarm at 5:15 a.m.? Count me in.

“What about yardage? And do the guys swim at the same time as the girls?”

“Anywhere from five to seven thousand yards a practice. We split up into groups too, so distance swimmers have separate practices from sprinters, and stroke swimmers have different practices from freestylers. The girls and guys swim together, in separate lanes most of the time, but they do the same practices.”

Only five to seven thousand yards in two hours? I’m doing six to eight thousand in only and hour and forty five right now. This is exactly what I’m looking for. I’ll even get to swim short sets for sprinters instead of the grueling long sets of 800s at a time that the distance swimmers have to swim. Good to hear the guys and girls swim together. Some of my best friends now are the girls that swim in my lane.

I liked the sound of the program, mostly because it sounded easier. It sounded like I could sleep in and take practices less seriously. After looking through times on the roster, it looked like I could be an average swimmer on the team with my current times. I didn’t necessarily have to improve. I didn’t want to be one of the best, but I didn’t want to struggle to make the team each year. I would have been content with ‘B’ relays and making consolation finals.

In high school, my friend Adam, a non-swimmer, used to ask me and my friend Nick, another swimmer, “Why do you guys swim if you complain about it so much?”

Nick and I would look at each unable to think of why we still swim.

“Umm, well because…” we would respond, unsure why we were swimming everyday, for ten months of the last year. “Because it’s fun to compete, to win. Practices suck, but the racing part is fun.” I wish I could practice half as much and still improve. I had goals and I wanted to get them, but I didn’t want to practice to get there even though I knew I had to.

In high school, I hoped for a late night snow storm to cancel school so we wouldn’t have Monday morning practices, but school wasn’t cancelled until practice ended. Before afternoon practices, I waited in the locker room, taking my time getting changed into my suit, hoping for some strange circumstance requiring a cancellation of practice. Ever since the one Friday we played kickball on the field hockey field outside the natatorium, I hoped every Friday was going to be a “Fun Friday.”

After high school, my year -ong commitment became a season long commitment. I didn’t train in the spring after senior year, I swam a couple times a week over the summer, and I slowly eased my way back into it in the fall before the start of my official collegiate practice. During the spring and summer I satisfied my desire to compete with pick-up games of basketball and racquetball with friends. When my last race of collegiate swimming is over, I’m not sure when or if I’ll swim another lap of the pool. Even though I didn’t enjoy the laps across the pool, I enjoyed the company that I had doing it.

Surviving practice after practice with the same guys day after day creates unique bonds. When going through a painful process with someone, you become closer. You share that moment of pain and you understand the other a lot more by how they push through the pain just to beat the guy next to him six months later by two tenths of a second.

It just happens that the pain is for at least 230 hours in a pool and 57 hours in a weight room every season. If the practices weren’t so painful then I wouldn’t have the trust for my teammates to shave my back or the other hard-to-reach places on my body. Masters swimming and club swimming are not the same as a high school team or a college team. In Masters and club swimming, there’s no ultimate goal that the entire team is working toward and the team is too big to know every swimmer, so the bonds aren’t formed and you’re left swimming by yourself in a sea of other swimmers doing the same. Those who swim in those programs are the people who love the sport, but I love the team and struggle in those programs.

After finishing my four-year swimming career at Dickinson College, I sat down with Coach. I talked about the interview I had with him in the spring before I enrolled, and the thoughts that I kept to myself about why I joined the team. I said, “Thank you.”

I accepted the spot on the team because I knew I could get by as a member who could contribute, but once I got to know the team it was nearly impossible to avoid working my hardest for the team. I was no longer swimming by myself in a sea of swimmers, but helping to kick and pull my team to success. Being around a group for countless hours that I could rely on and look for help tore me out of a phase of exhaustion.

The team cured my symptoms of a burnout. I not only completed four years of swimming at a collegiate level, but became a leader on the team. In my final meet, I reached times I never thought I could achieve, accrediting the times on scoreboard to misprints, faulty time pads, foggy goggles making an ‘8’ look like a ‘3.’ Those on the pool deck yelling their lungs out and throwing their arms in the air; my teammates opened that possibility.

I thank my coach for bringing together a group of individually-minded, diverse, and disparate young adults to spend time together in and out of the pool. We were not just a team according to meet results, but we were a team on the pool deck, in the classroom, and across campus.

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Swim Giggles LLC

7 years ago

So glad that it turned out well! 🙂