60 members of the University of Indianapolis swim and dive team woke up every morning around 4 a.m., headed to the pool from 5-7 a.m. for practice, following with dryland workouts afterwards until 8:30 a.m. repeated this routine everyday for two weeks as they attended their training trip in Waikiki, Hawaii.
After a full morning, the team headed to the beach, but then had another two hours of training in the evening. According to Head Swim and Dive Coach Jason Hite, the team would go to sleep pretty early due to the full day of training. Throughout the trip, they were able to have a few half days of training, instead of a full day, as well as take one full day off so they could enjoy things like the beach or hiking.
The team was gone for two weeks over winter break and their main purpose of the trip, being the training, focusing on swimming, as well as strength and conditioning. According to Head Swim and Dive Coach Jason Hite, the teams were able to focus on individualized training as well as the experience to utilize different equipment.
“It [the trip] was extremely positive and productive,” Hite said. “I think we took the next step on this trip that we had to take to get ready for championship season. The atmosphere and the energy of the practices before, during and after were amazing and we had extremely productive meetings and focus. They [the team] went through hard, nasty and tough practices which was really productive training wise.”
According to junior breaststroke Jonathan Hansen, the purpose of the training trip was to see what each team member’s capacity is at before conferences and he noticed a lot of team spirit despite the hard practice throughout the trip.
“When you have practices that are that hard, there are for sure going to be people that already have a negative stigma about the set. Everybody eventually gets plagued by some negativity,” Hansen said. “But, you have people there [at practice] shouting constantly and uplifting you. It makes the set go by faster and makes you more determined to do the set the way it was designed to do. It kept us with momentum and after each set, we would always shout others out and never called out ourselves. It was great to watch because that was the same spirit that we show at GLVC and Nationals.”
As far as team bonding goes, Hite said that the experience of being in Hawaii together was new to most of the team and it was a trip that was amazing for him to see, such as the enthusiasm at practices and the excitement on their faces of just being in Hawaii.
“When they go and play in the waves together, they experience something that most of them, if not all of them have not done before,” Hite said. “All of that bonds them together and it is something that can never be taken away, which is something that I got to experience as a student athlete several years ago, and I really wanted to provide that for them.”
Freshman breaststroke Alaina Joyce said that swimming gave her the chance to go somewhere she never really thought she would.
“When I was little I would say, you know, I want to go Hawaii and then reality hits and it’s like, no-I’m never going to go to Hawaii,” Joyce said. “But, swimming gave me the opportunity to go to someplace I never thought I was going to go to, and that was really nice.”
