State Championship Finals

 The Colorado 5A (largest schools) State Championship finals are set for this evening and the entire swim season ends with three hours of racing on a Friday night. The wonderful JV squad that I coached swam their final races last weekend at a successful league championship meet, so I wouldn't say that the success of their season - or my season - rests on tonight's results, but our team record and our team banner waits anxiously for record-setting swims starting at 5pm today.

Swimming is a ridiculous tough sport; athletes follow the black line on the bottom of the pool for hours a day, minds busy either focusing on what they're doing (the hope) or spinning wildly through their their to-do list, and their recent social interactions (top of mind for HS swimmers). We swim until our arms are too tired to lift the fork at dinner, until our skin bleaches and peels, until exhaustion becomes familiar.

Coaches write their best, most focused workouts each day, including strength and resistance training, stretching, sprinting, distance, stroke and drill work. We preach technique until we're blue in the face, only to be interrupted by young faces arguing over the playlist emanating from our phones. SZA, Disney, Taylor, etc. seem far more important than the correct catch and pull of the stroke - at least until these final championship weekend when the fast tech suits come on and young faces transformed by nerves.

On deck we agonize over taper, or "resting" workouts, planning the descent in yards for weeks, urging kids to eat enough, sleep enough to rebuild muscle tissue and throw off the overwhelm so typical in high school. For some swimmers (usually upperclasswomen) the taper hits perfectly and time drops away as a result, leading to joyful celebrations by coaches and shocked delight on the face of the swimmer.

For other swimmers, the taper doesn't work or their nerves take over. Arms and shoulders tight with nerves can't move as quickly, and the swim doesn't look fluid or strong but frenetic. Coaches agonize over those swims, wondering if the athlete needed a few more days of rest, a day off, another pep talk. On a weekend when we had 29 best times and multiple drops of many seconds, all I could think about was the one swimmer who had a rough meet. "What could I have done differently?" was a refrain for days after that.

So the season ends tonight and we will have tears of joy, tears of sorrow, looks of delight and looks of disappointment. For all of the varsity athletes, practice will resume again on Monday for their club teams but for the coaches, a well-deserved 8-month break will begin, and we will ruminate repeatedly on what worked, who swam well and how to help those who didn't.