With the biggest meet of the year finally upon it, the women’s swimming & diving team is fully prepared for the ACC Championships starting today. The event, which includes all 11 ACC teams that compete in women’s swimming & diving, is a three-day meet held at the University of Maryland.
“This is of course the biggest meet of our entire year. We have been training for this since day one in August. It all comes down to this,” junior Anna Linkenauger said. “It’s very exciting, there is a lot of pressure. It’s just a lot of time and hard work that has come down to this meet.”
The team has been preparing for the ACC’s since the start of the season and has gone through countless days of practice and weight lifting to prepare for this one meet.
“In the beginning of the year when it seems so far away, you remind everyone that this is what you’re working for. It’s six months away but its ACC’s,” senior Erica Smith said. “We have freshman here who are so pumped up for their first ACC’s, and you have seniors who want to go all out in their last meet.”
To prepare for the ACC’s, the team has changed their usual practice routine. Instead of focusing on conditioning and weights, State has been practicing the little things that do not get as much attention during the season.
“Well we have been working more on technical stuff. These past couple months we have been working on our base work and our swimming,” Smith said. “But these past couple weeks, we have been working on more technique like our flip turns and starts.”
State has been using a conditioning method called tapering, which allows the swimmers some rest while still keeping them in shape and focused before the meet.
“Well in swimming, we do what is called tapering where they have worked hard and put in a tremendous load of quantity and quality work over the past month,” coach Brooks Teal said. “And in the final days leading up to the competition, we slow down and take some rest.”
The team’s goal going into the meet is to perform and finish better than its eighth place finish last year, and the team members feel that this goal can be achieved. However, their main focus is to be able to go into the meet as a team and come out as a team.
“I am looking at this team to stay unified and tight and to battle hard, and I know they will come out with success in the end,” coach Teal said. “We’ve had our best November ever, our best January ever and we are really looking for a great ACC’s. It’s going to come in a lot of different ways. I think most girls are going to swim their lifetime best times.”
