Upbeat UK swimmers and divers face Tennessee
By Aaron Sanderford
Staff Writer
Girls just wanna have fun.An attitude put to song in the '80s is helping the UK women's swimming and diving teams keep work in perspective."For us, this year has been really upbeat," junior diver Beth Leake said. "When we go into the showers after practice we still have a smile on our face, which is different from last year."
In the off-season, swimming coach Gary Conelly and diving coach Michael Lyden altered the fall training schedule. They added more dry-land exercises, and in return put breaks in the monotony of pool yardage and dive time.
"We've just emphasized conditioning, lots of stadiums, abdominal work and focused on breaking them down to strengthen them up," Lyden said.
Conelly said the change was made in response to a drop-off last December from strong showings in the previous months.
"I felt like we weren't making it fun enough for them," he said. "Now they are a lot healthier with fewer shoulder injuries and a lot sharper mentally."
Coming off a season in which the Wildcats finished a best-ever 14th in the NCAA Championships, tinkering with the system might be questioned.
But the changes did not lessen the workload. They diversified it.
They will be tested today when they face 10th-ranked Tennessee at the Lancaster Aquatics Center.
A typical day begins with 6 a.m. pool work for the swimmers, and the divers strap on spotting belts and work out the acrobatics of their dives on dry land.
At 7:15 a.m., swimmers dry off and meet the divers in the weight room for hour-long weight lifting.
Classes are sandwiched in-between the weight workout and the 2:15 p.m. practice.
Swimmers head back to the pool, while divers split time between dry-land work and water immersion.
Surviving the grind is a daunting task for the student-athletes.
Yet freshman Annabel Kosten said aside from the early morning workouts, there is always someone making people laugh.
"When you practice as much as we do, if you can't have fun, you can't do it," she said.
Leake said the schedule forces a re-organization of sleep-habits.
"By the end of the day, you are so ready to go to bed that it's hard to be a night person," she said. "It forces you to become a morning person."
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