The Morning Swim Show, Dec. 12, 2011: Transition to New Coach Working Well for Austen Thompson

PHOENIX, Arizona, December 12. AUSTEN Thompson has come a long way since joining the University of Arizona men's swim team, and on today's edition of The Morning Swim Show, he talks about his rapid improvement over the past three years.

He also talks about the team's transition to a new coach, his thoughts on swimming fast at the recent Texas Invitational and his goals for 2012. Watch the full show in the video player below and visit SwimmingWorld.TV for more video interviews.

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Show Transcript: (Note: This is an automated service where some typos and grammatical errors may occur.)

Peter Busch: Welcome to The Morning Swim Show for Monday, December 12th 2011. I'm your host Peter Busch. In the FINIS monitor today we'll talk to Austen Thompson, a senior at the University of Arizona, just broke 3:40 in the 400IM at the Texas Invite as the top 400 IM time in college this year in a time that would have won at NCAA last March. Austen joins us right now in the FINIS monitor from Tucson. Hey Austen, welcome to the show. How are you doing?

Austen Thompson: Doing well Peter, how are you doing?

Peter Busch: Good, thanks. You're homecoming king about a month ago, now you're swimming the fastest times in college, life is good.

Austen Thompson: Yes, life's going very well so far. I'm having a good senior year.

Peter Busch: No kidding, man. So you were obviously in the zone in Texas. Best you've ever felt or just a natural progression of how you've been swimming the past few years?

Austen Thompson: I think it's just been more than anything else the progression I have in swimming and the training I've been doing. I've had a lot of just time to think in the off-season since last college season and a lot of things have been changing and improving and just trying to get better and I think it's just now obviously paying off and it's been great, I'm loving it and swimming faster than I ever have.

Peter Busch: What's something significant that you changed?

Austen Thompson: I'd say for my IM and especially it's been like my freestyle, I've been working a lot on my freestyle because last year at NCAAs I think that was by far my weakest leg and I've just been working on getting my endurance up for freestyle so I can just get the 400 IM and finish that race better because that thing could be a monster, so whenever I can get like a chance I do longer freestyle pool sets, work on my stroke, my technique, holding more water, just being more efficient, and it's been paying off.

Peter Busch: I imagine there's some motivation knowing it's a pretty wide open field this year. Conor Dwyer was sort of the guy last year and he didn't actually swim that well in March because he got sick but again, your time would have won, so you've got to be feeling good about the potential of winning?

Austen Thompson: Yes, that's definitely been in the goals ever since last season. I had a shot at it last year and I didn't get what I wanted, so this year I'm more driven than ever to make sure I get home with the national title and bring the first national title in the 400 IM back to Arizona.

Peter Busch: I talked to my brother Augie, one of your former coaches, before this interview because I wanted to ask him "What do you remember of Austen coming out of high school?" and he said "Good, we thought he would be really good" but you weren't necessarily an elite high school recruit but it just goes to show things can change once you get to college.

Austen Thompson: Absolutely, I mean the work that those guys did to get me and I was just kind of raw, I wasn't elite, I just kind of came in middle of the pack with the huge class that we signed my senior year in high school. It was just having all those guys around me and pushing me every day to become is just kind of what has given me some motivation, just through hard work and trying to do whatever I can to get better has definitely paid its dividends by now.

Peter Busch: You mentioned your class, you guys have a great senior class, and it's one of the reasons that you're considered one of the frontrunners to win the team title this year, very strong upper class. But you guys have a great freshman class as well. Kevin Cordes has already proven himself to be one of the best breaststrokers in the country.

Austen Thompson: Yes, it's been great, it's been special, like all of our classes are just really strong. We have great people in each one so that's kind of what makes us kind of unique. Our senior class has a lot of leadership in it but the thing is we can rely on our sophomores, freshmen, juniors as well to just throw down some serious times. Cordes is a perfect example of a freshman stepping up, 51.7 100 breaststroke flat start is ridiculous, so having him on the team is definitely going to help. In addition guys like Giles for sprint butterfly, things like that, just make us better, and plus guys like Cory and things like that you can't argue with how there are national champions on your team already so we're looking really good come March and I mean team titles definitely are our ultimate goal, everyone's got that in their minds right now so that's what we're going for.

Peter Busch: Was it tougher to some of the guys to make the transition from different coaches, head coaches?

Austen Thompson: Yes, definitely, I mean that was one of the harder things for people to get over was the coaching transition, it took some time, people were at different places, some people bought in right away, some people took a little bit of time but I think now showing how we swam at Texas it's just definitely like a testament to how well the coaches have done making the transition as easy as possible for us, doing what we need to do to get better – Eric, Geoff, Tracy – we already had Rick on staff but all those guys just do so much to help us get better and they want to win just as bad as we do so it's great to have that kind of mindset and just the positivity on deck to get those guys through it and it's helped make the transition a lot easier. Right now we're just at the best place possible.

Peter Busch: Well I'd say it's going to be tough to top this semester or next semester but you never know what's in store. Any big holiday plans for you?

Austen Thompson: Not really, just going home, spending some time with the family for a little while, come back, and getting into full training, Christmas training and everything. It's going to be a hard next couple of weeks, next couple of months of training but it's going to be worth it come March. I think if people were surprised by how we swam in December it's going to be even more ridiculous when we actually get our full NCAA taper and just hit our stride, I think we're going to impress a lot of people.

Peter Busch: Well Austen, congratulations on getting off to a great start your senior year at Arizona. Good luck next semester.

Austen Thompson: Thank you very much, Peter.

Peter Busch: All right, that's Austen Thompson joining us in the FINIS monitor from Tucson. That's here for today's show, I'm Peter Busch reminding you to keep your head down at the finish.

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