That Turn!

Remember back in the day when we used to have to touch the wall during the backstroke flip turn?  I like to tell my swimmers how lucky they are that they never had to do that.  It was so much slower than what we do now that Mark Tewksbury broke the world record 53 seconds after FINA signed the paperwork saying we can just go ahead and flip without staying on our backs until we touch the wall with our hand.  (Of course, we were allowed to stand on the gutter back then for the back start so I guess we didn't have it so bad.)

Lately we have all seen the bucket turn and the crossover-touch turn coming back with some top notch IM'ers for the transition from back to breast...  my swimmers always comment on it when they see it and we spend a little time practicing it, but the cross-over is really only worth the time for the absurdity because the kids take forever to get it even when I demonstrate.  (Or maybe, because I demonstrate.) It's like watching a blooper reel.  Of course, it is probably not fast enough to justify skipping the open turn or even the standard back flip anyway, right?  I mean, we were pretty good at it back in the early 90's but it was really just a fancy way to go just about the same speed as the open turn...

Then again, none of us were quite the level of athlete Ryan Lochte is.  Watch him break that SCM 100 IM record.  Sorry that the video is a little blurry, but at about 3:29 on the video you will see the greatest back to breast transition ever.  Yes, it is even better than the one Phelps did in London that made you nearly burn up your DVR remote when you re-watched it so many times.  Did he really even touch that wall?



Go ahead... watch it again.

and again.

and again.

And now show it to your swimmers so they can waste a half hour of practice time trying to figure out how in the hell he did that.

Missy Franklin Gives Up NCAA Eligibility

Franklin gets emotional in London after pop star
Justin Bieber sent her a supportive message via twitter.

December 7, 2012
From Staff Reports

Aurora, Colorado--

When four time Olympic gold medalist Missy Franklin came home from swim practice on Tuesday evening, her self-professed "Bieber fever" spiked.  She had received a care package full of t-shirts, CD's, posters, and other memorabilia that would make any Justin Bieber fan uncontrollably excited.  During the Olympic games, Franklin expressed her excitement over a tweet and a video message the singer had sent her, and since the games Bieber has continued to express his admiration.

"Beebs sent me an awesome care package."  She told The Swim Brief in an interview.  "My mom was so cute the way she had laid it out on the table for me to see when I walked in the door.  I just started bawling."

The catch?  Franklin had famously decided to maintain her amateur status, foregoing millions of dollars in possible sponsorships as a professional swimmer, to continue competing with her high school team and with Cal where she has already signed a letter of intent.


Little did she know that the CEO of the NCAA, Mark Emmert, would soon knock on her door.  The NCAA recently took a "zero tolerance" stance toward all things Justin Beiber.  "This Beaver (sic) fellow," Emmert told reporters, "He just... well, we couldn't take it any more.  Half of us at the last committee meeting have daughters in middle school.  You get those songs stuck in your head, and when you realize what song you were just singing you feel so bad about yourself for the rest of the day.  We just decided that the NCAA should have higher standards and we needed to crack down."

Franklin's mother was well aware of the NCAA rule.  "I looked at this as an opportunity to have a sort of intervention.  I mean, how insane was it for her to pass up all those millions of dollars?  I get it, she is young and money is not the most important thing in her life, but my God!"  She said in an interview.  "This was the only way to knock some sense into her!  If she doesn't care about money, maybe she cares about these silly Justin Bieber posters enough to settle for being a multi-millionaire."

Missy's USA Swimming club coach, Todd Schmitz, added "I have tried to talk to her about this problem before... not about the money, but about the Justin Bieber thing.  Any time I sit her down to have a serious discussion about it her eyes glaze over and she starts quietly mouthing the words to the baby baby song.  There is just no reaching her.  Hopefully some good can come from this.  With the millions she is going to make by giving up her amateur status, perhaps she can afford some real help from certified therapists."

Cal coach Terri McKeever reacted surprisingly well after hearing the news that she is losing her top recruit.  "While it is difficult to lose a talent like Missy Franklin from our incoming class, over the last couple of years we have realized that they call it Bieber Fever because it is an illness.  I support the NCAA zero tolerance policy toward Miss Bieber and am relieved to have learned of this problem before bringing it on campus.  We wish Missy the best of luck with her future professional swimming career, and we hope that it is not too late for Missy to seek effective counseling."


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The Hospitality Table May Be the Death of Me

Free food.  Free food everywhere.  The gluttony never stops.  When I was a young coach I used to put meets on my schedule based on how good the hospitality table was.  Some clubs even get a reputation.  I would email the coaches to make requests.  "Are you gonna serve that yummy fruit pizza again?"  It's almost like some kind of a neighborhood competition you would see on The Real Housewives of New Jersey.  Seriously.  It has gone too far.

"You's gonna come to my swim meet and badmouth my cinnamon rolls?! Your meet didn't even have a cappuccino machine!"

Three full meals served every day of a weekend invitational would be enough, but noooo......  they have tubs of cookies and bowls of candy just a few feet away from where we coaches park to watch our swimmers race.  Ten steps to an unlimited supply of chocolaty goodness?  Sure.  Why not?  If I used a pedometer it would actually measure my anti-fitness, as it would record nothing but the steps I am taking to and from food.

Sorry kid.  I didn't get your splits.  I had to use my heat sheet as a napkin and I think I accidentally ate my stopwatch.

How do I know they are trying to kill me?  It's the wagon.  They send a kid in to do the dirty work.  A seven year old with a funny Christmas hat, pulling a radio flyer wagon full of sugary drinks and cookies and breakfast burritos and syrup. Oh, you brought a tub of frosting to spread on my bacon?  How thoughtful! Come on, kid.  I am trying to take splits here.  How about I open my mouth and you just spray the whipped cream in, eh?

What?  You don't dress like an elf for the December invitational meets?

Then, to make it worse, it's like the other coaches want to put the nails in my coffin by exploiting my biggest weakness:  hot wings.  "Hey, you wanna hit Buffalo Wild Wings after finals?  There's a coupon in the heat sheet for six free wings if you buy a dozen."

Yeah... because that's what I need.  18 wings and a couple of beers for my fourth meal right before bed.  At least the hospitality room doesn't have beer.  We all know how that would end up.

Dear Viking!: Why Bother to Shower?

Swim Brief readers email us questions all the time.  For real.  What, do you think we would just make up questions from imaginary readers for a phony advice column?  What kind of a website do you think this is?  So, welcome to our newest recurring feature, "Dear Viking."

The Viking thinks hard so you don't have to...

Dear Viking!

I swim all the time.  It's not like I reek of BO or anything.  Do I really need to bother to take a shower?

Dear concerned reader who is obviously a real person,

Why bother?  I know!  Right?!  Swimmers don't shower... well, at least not to rub off all the smells.  Sometimes I used to just kind of hang out in there to get warm and occasionally pee on my friends, but I have never really understood why those silly divers use all those soaps and lotions and stuff.  Swimmers smell like chlorine-- and what does chlorine smell like?:  CLEAN.  That's what.

Is it a coincidence that Mr. Clean is bald?  Hells no.  He shaves his legs too.  Most people don't know he was a 47 in the 100 fly back in the 70's at Auburn and he still tears it up at Masters Nats.  Just look at him.  The dude can sprint.

The eyebrows ain't white because he's old.  It's because of the pool.

Of course, if you were otherwise detained and unable to practice for a few weeks I could understand wanting to wash up, but if you actually read The Swim Brief you are probably pretty hardcore and the only way you would miss practice is if you were trapped in a cave with your arm pinned under a rock.  It's not like you could just shower there anyway.  Just run in place until you break a sweat.  There is enough chlorine stored in your pores to give you a sweat-released just-swam smell for at least a good month after you retire.

Will my girlfriend still love me if my scent fades away?

You know what drives me really crazy?  Special products that advertise like we need to wash off the chlorine smell. What?!  Get rid of my free cologne?  Chicks dig the cloroxy-fresh smell.  Or at least the chicks who smell like chlorine do, and it's not like you have time to hang out with the ones who don't, right?  Been there. Civilian girls will never understand you.  Stick with your kind.

Really?  Does anyone see this picture and think they don't want this to happen to them?  Remove the word "Don't" and you have the most effective advertisement for joining swim team ever.  

Shower?  Nah.  Just get in your two-a-days, wear the smell like a badge, and quit worrying about it.  You smell fine.



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Watch for MIT Swimming to Make Great Strides This Year

When the big brains at MIT swimming realized that strapping their swimmers to a big fat rocket wasn't going to help their relay qualify for nationals, they decided to look into upgrading their slipperiness.

Remember that Neverwet stuff?  You know, the superhydrophobic spray that Craig Lord wrote about that could take swimsuit technology to a whole new level by repelling water like Rain-X in full roid rage?

Well...  MIT just developed the next level of superhydrophobia.  Check out this excerpt from an article at extremetech.com:


Hydrophobic, as you have probably guessed, literally means “water fear.” There are hydrophobic substances that resolutely refuse to mix with water (such as oils and fats), and hydrophobic materials and coatings that prevent water from pooling on its surface. In scientific terms, hybrophobicity is caused by surfaces that disrupt the hydrogen bonding in water. So as to minimize the disruption to its molecular makeup, the water droplet pushes itself away from the surface to minimize its contact area, becoming a very tight droplet...

There are two ways to create a hydrophobic material: You either coat it with some kind of wax (oil, grease, or some other special, hydrophobic substance); or you use nanoengineering to create a special, nanopatterned textured surface. These nanopatterns, which are hydrophobic, take the form of little bumps or posts that are around 10 micrometers (10 micron, 10,000 nanometers) across. This kind of hydrophobic material is fairly well understood. The MIT breakthrough being discussed today starts with a nanopatterned hydrophobic material — and then coats it in a very fine layer of lubricant, massively increasing its hydrophobicity.

It turns out that the small gaps between the bumps/posts are capable of exerting just enough capillary force to hold an oil lubricant in place. The scientists simply had to dunk the nanopatterned material into a vat of lubricant, pull it out, and the lubricant remains fixed in the material. The nanopattern, plus the lubricant, results in a material that is 10,000 times more hybrophobic than the non-lubricated version. The pits are so small that it takes just half a teaspoon of lubricant to cover a square yard (0.8sqm) of the material. “Drops can glide on the surface,” Kripa Varanasi, the lead researcher, says. “These are just crazy velocities.” 

If you read the article you will realize that this could be a major find in how it will effect our energy industry.  I like to think it is not really something that will make a difference to the swimming community unless someone like Tony Stark decides he wants to be better than Phelps at being Phelps, but really, I am sure that there are people out there now with plans to be the first to make use of nanotech in the racing pool.

Honestly, I think that we need to give MIT's swimmers full license to play with this tech...  I mean, really, wouldn't you love to have that as a project in one of your classes?  I want to know:  what does it really do in regard to moving through water?; is it harmful?; how can we detect if someone is trying to cheat by using it?; would we want it on some parts of the body and not others?

I am pretty sure my breaststroke pull out would be pretty freakin amazing if I got the 10,000 times superhydrophobia effect.  That is of course, if I don't explode when I hit the water.  Knowing me and how good I am with technology, I would probably get this stuff on the bottom of my feet and spend a half hour just trying to get from the locker room to the blocks without sliding dangerously all across the wet pool deck.    That could make a swim meet real interesting real quick, right?

Maybe this is how we would spot the cheaters.

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The Legend of Kevin Carson

My only picture of Kevin Carson is exactly the way I want to remember him.

My teammate Kevin Carson was a fellow (Southwest) Missouri State Bear for only one season, and even though I hadn't spoken to him in over a decade, I will always consider him a good friend.  My heart breaks as I type this.  I attended Kevin's funeral yesterday.

Kevin was a friend to all, and would welcome anyone who wanted to chill and love life to be dealt into to a round of cards at his table.  Kevin was eternally goofy, had an infectious laugh and gave all of us on the team some great one liners I will never forget.  For a clue on how comfortable a friend he once was to me, here is an example:  he borrowed my clothes at Halloween and impersonated me for hours at one of the best parties I have ever been to.  I wouldn't let just anyone do that.  With Kevin I knew that it was all in fun.

Athletes can leave the sport of swimming in many ways.  Some are bitter and never want to swim again.  Some wish they had four more years of eligibility. Kevin went out in a very unique way that had a profound effect on my life.  Carson was injured the year before, during his freshman season at Arkansas, which happened to be the year U of A announced they were terminating the men's program.  Both knees were shot and he had put on a lot of weight while he spent months in a wheelchair before he transferred to swim with us.  Kevin was not enjoying swimming much during that one year he swam for the Bears.  From what I have heard, he went to Coach Steck at the end of the season and basically said, "Coach, you and I both know I am probably not ever going to get back into form.  I plan to swim again next year and waste your scholarship money unless you give it to Klosterman."


This was Kevin Carson in a nutshell.  He knew my family was struggling financially and he decided that if he was gonna hang up his suit, he was gonna do it in a way that made something good come of it.  Kevin was a great friend.  Coach Steck pulled me in that spring and doubled my scholarship heading into my sophomore season.  I always thought it was just because I had earned it by swimming fast.  I didn't know about what Kevin had done until later in my career.

We have all lost friends, and if you read this blog, you probably have a special bond with some of your past teammates as well, but that is not why I am sharing this at The Swim Brief.  I am posting this here because there is a chance you have already heard of Kevin Carson and never knew it, and I want you to associate my good friend with this story you have probably heard on deck:

-----------------------------------------------------------

In the spring of 1992 Kevin Carson was the lead off leg of Parkway Swim Club's 400 Free Relay in the final heat of the last event of the Region VIII (Sectional) Championships at the University of Arkansas.  When Kevin took his mark on that old style aluminum block he did not realize that his ring finger had wrapped around the lip under the front of the block.  When Kevin landed in the water the end of his finger didn't go with him.  It had become wedged and was torn completely off.

Kevin is the guy who got his finger chopped off on the starting block.  I have heard that story on deck more than once.  Maybe you have too.


I wasn't there, but someone told me that his finger had to be retrieved from it's float in the middle of the lane. It was reattached and the only way you would ever have known it had happened is that when Kevin dealt a deck of cards or counted dollar bills it was noticeable that the finger didn't bend.  He stuck it out like someone sticking out their pinky to be fancy when they drink champagne.  You know, cause the higher you stick your pinky up, the fancier you are, right?  Before I heard the story I guess I just thought he had a really fancy way of counting his cash.
 

So now you know... that guy who got his finger chopped off on the starting block,  he was a real guy.  A really great guy.  And I hope that every time you are taking your mark on a block, or teaching someone a proper start, your mind turns to Kevin Carson just for a brief second and it makes you smile, and maybe makes you a little glad they don't make starting blocks the way they used to.

Kevin, my good friend, you will be missed.

 

Swim Brief Classic: The Start of Every High School Invitational I Have Ever Hosted

Since today I am scrambling to get ready to host our first high school meet of the season, I felt like sharing this one form the old swimviking blogspot.  I am sure you can all relate.

Uhh... now what do I do?

“Welcome to the Red Bird Invitational. We are set for a 1:00 start. This is the time when we need volunteers to come down behind the blocks to run stopwatches. If you are a volunteer timer, please check in with the referee near the starters booth at this time…”

Six minutes pass…

“We are hoping for a 1:00 start, but we are going to need twelve volunteer timers to run stopwatches behind the blocks. We can’t start the meet until we have twelve people back there helping us out. Anyone can do it and we need all the help we can get. Please come on down. Thank you.”

Four more minutes pass…

“It’s just about one o'clock right now and we still need eight more volunteer timers. There is no pressure here folks. We have a timing system. The times are only needed for back-up in case the system were to malfunction. Even if you have never timed at a meet before, it is no big deal. Our referee will show you everything you need to know. It really is an easy job and you get the best seat in the house; except when they take their marks, but then you just have to look away for a couple of seconds. It’s not as traumatic as you might imagine. Please help us get started. Thank you.”

Three more minutes pass…

“Okay guys. We are already getting a late start. I apologize but we still need four more volunteers to run stopwatches. All you need is a thumb. Stop. Start. Reset. That’s it. You don’t even need both thumbs. Just one will get the job done...”“All of you in the bleachers-- if you have thumbs, don’t raise your hand.”

“I thought so. That means you are qualified! Please come grab a stopwatch and a clipboard. Let‘s get this party started!”

One more minute passes…

“Cows can’t volunteer to time. They don’t have thumbs. My dog tried to volunteer, but he doesn’t have thumbs either. I used to have a pet monkey. I didn’t let him try to time because he was always drunk, but now that I think about it, even a drunk monkey could probably time. No, really. He had a thumb. Just like you. Please, let’s get some volunteers to get the meet moving.”

“Don‘t make my swimmers do it. Please. That‘s just plain wrong.”

45 more seconds…

“Come on people… We could be using our thumbs to time races but instead we are all standing around with them up our... Oh, wait. We got enough?! Okay!”

“We are ready to start the meet. Yeeeeee-hah! All timers are in place. I am pumped! You other three people in the bleachers who aren’t timing oughtta get a wave going or something! It‘s time for some fast swimming!”

“Go Red Birds!”