Orcas Swim Club: A window into competitive swimming

Three other members, 13-year-old Madison Higgs, 12-year-old Elizabeth Johnson, and 11-year-old Reece Sommerfeld also practice with that group often because they have provincial qualifying times.

Coach Ally MacLeod can be heard from across the aquatic centre constantly yelling out times and making different gestures with her arms, encouraging swimmers to keep pushing.

For Nord and Parker, two of the CSG athletes, the pressure remains.

A typical week sees the two in the pool five days a week, often twice in one day.

Three days a week (On Monday, Wednesday, and Friday) they are in the pool at 6 a.m. for an hour and a half and then again at 4:30 p.m. for the same amount of time. On Monday, dryland training also follows the afternoon swim session.

On Tuesday, they swim as well, but only in the afternoon, and on Thursday, they are not in the pool but do weight training in the field house for an hour and a half.

On Saturday, there’s no time for rest. They travel to Saskatoon to swim for two hours with the Saskatoon Goldfins swim club in their Olympic-sized pool. Then they come back to North Battleford and do more weight training.

On Sunday, they can finally recover. But only until 6 a.m. the next morning.

For the five others, training remains rigorous. They just do fewer or no 6 a.m. swims, and instead of weights, they do bodyweight exercises on deck after the workout.

Right now, MacLeod also has the whole group doing what’s called race pace training or VO2 max training.

“That’s going your max speed for a short distance, many times,” 15-year-old Nord said following Friday’s practice. “So you’re going fast, a lot. A lot. It just gets tiring after you do it for like two weeks. We’re starting to slow down a little bit but we’re still training pretty hard.”

“What I’m doing is I’m taxing out the energy system for their sprints,” MacLeod explained. “The sprinting energy system doesn’t last much longer than like a minute. If you get really specific, there’s one that only lasts up to 30 seconds. So basically, what I’m doing is I’m getting them to push to their max for those 30 seconds and hoping that during those 30 seconds, they can swim faster but also that instead of 30 seconds, they can maybe go 35 seconds at their top speed.”

School may have just ended, but remember all seven are also students during the year.

Is it hard for them to balance studies with training?

Apparently not, for most.

“I have lots of time to do homework and hang out with friends,” 14-year-old Pruden said, who will compete at NAIG during the week of July 16-23. “I just get my homework done in school.”

Likewise, Nord, Johnson and Sommerfeld also said it’s not too hard balancing the two.

“There’s an hour and a half for swim practice, so you still have three hours until you go to bed,” Nord said. “So there’s lots of time to do homework.”

“It’s pretty easy,” Higgs added. “You still have lots of time for homework and my teacher doesn’t really give out homework, so I’m good.”

For one of the Orcas, the CSG experience won’t be completely brand new.

Lindsay Reimer is competing on Team Sask’s special Olympics team for the second time.

“I am looking forward to competing because I love swimming,” Reimer said. “I have been focusing on getting stronger and faster with my arms and legs.”

Reimer was also just at the Special Olympics Saskatchewan Provincial Games, where she took home seven medals: two gold, three silver, and two bronze.

“I want to push myself to get my best times ever and make my team proud of me,” Reimer said of the upcoming competition.

With the constant training and push to beat the clock, it’s easy to think swimming is just about being stronger and faster than your opponents.

Not so.

A huge part of competitive swimming is the mental side of the sport. After all, when you’re in the pool, you’re on your own.

Swimmers need to block out any and all distractions, which is easier said than done.

“During the race, I really try to focus on technique because that’s the thing that really breaks apart…when you’re tired,” Nord said. “So just repetitions in your mind, saying “OK, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this, I’m going to reach as far as I can on this stroke.’

“If you’re not thinking about anything, it’s going to break down over time, your technique.”

Of course, self-motivation comes in different forms.

Parker often prefers to repeat verses from popular songs in his head as he swims.

“It sounds weird, but during races, I don’t know why, just a single verse from a song. I just say it over and over…like the Rocky theme song,” Parker said. “Sometimes it helps me pace with my strokes.

“Sometimes it’s a Taylor Swift song that was just playing moments before or other times it’s one that I’ve been listening to all day to get me in the zone…It helps me stay focused.”

MacLeod agrees how important mental toughness is.

“When I was cheering, I wasn’t really making much noise, it was all just signals because they can’t really rely on me to be right where they can see me to breathe, every time they breathe, so they need to kind of find it within themselves,” she said. “It’s very difficult. It requires so much training that they need to be tough. To finish sets like the one where they did today, where I’m asking them to go max speed over and over and over again with not enough recovery time to really recover, it’s super important.”

The CSG begin July 28 and run until Aug. 13 in Winnipeg, with swimming events beginning on Aug. 7.

Nord will compete in the 50-metre, 100-metre, and 200-metre butterfly; the 50-metre, 100-metre, and 200-metre breaststroke; the 50-metre freestyle, and the fly leg in the 4 x 100-metre medley relay.

Parker will compete in the 50-metre, 100-metre, 200-metre, and 400-metre freestyle; the free leg in the 4 x 50-metre medley relay, the 4 x 100-metre medley relay, the & 4 x 50-metre freestyle relay, and the 4 x 100 freestyle relay. There is potential for him to also swim in the open water event.

Reimer will compete in the 50-metre and100-metre backstroke, the 50-metre and 100-metre freestyle, and the 50-metre breaststroke.

For NAIG, Pruden will compete in the 50-metre and 100-metre freestyle, the 50-metre butterfly, the 50-metre breaststroke, the 100-metre backstroke, and the 200-metre medley.

nathan.kanter@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @NathanKanter11

by Nathan Kanter

Orcas Swim Club: A window into competitive swimming

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