T: Hello! I’m Tina Berger, I’m a senior at Noblesville High School and I swim with Delaney.
D: Hey! I’m Delaney Radican and I’m also a senior at Noblesville High School and we swim for the Noblesville Swim Club.
This next week Delaney and I, along with the rest of our team, will be traveling to Knoxville, Tenn. for a week of intense training at the University of Tennessee and we will top it all off with a competitive swim meet among other teams from this area.
Within our week we will have practices every day, in the mornings we will work on skills and drills with the University of Tennessee coaches and have our regular practices with our coach, Aleks Fansler and our occasional dry land workouts.
Today was day one, and it was a long one. We woke up bright and early to leave the school at around 8:30; from there we drove in caravans from Noblesville to Knoxville with occasional stops to use the restroom, and to eat a quick lunch.
As we got closer to Knoxville all of us were getting a little restless from the long car ride. As soon as we got to Knoxville we had to rush to get to our rooms and get ready for our first swim practice for the trip.
For weeks now, building up from our first week of practices in long course, we have been building up a set of 200’s. Every week the interval got faster as the number increased until we hit our maximum set of 18 x 200’s on a selected interval. While the mid-sprint group pushed through this grueling set, the distance group ventured a new feat of sets of 400’s with an end set of 9 x 400’s on a set interval.
Every week the mid-sprint group completes a set of 200’s but with each week we added 2 x 200’s. This week we hit 18 x 200s and it was rough to say the least but as a team we pushed through it and completed the set. Luckily for the mid-sprint group we don’t have to add on any 200s.
At the end of the day, we met to learn some new facts and goals about our fellow team mates and to talk about achieving our goals as a team. For the grand finale we had a competition to see who had the coolest trick on our team.
For the stupid human trick competition, it was a tie between Aidan Biddle and Adam Biddle. Both of their tricks were astonishing, and weirdly amazing and shocked the judges. The day was full of a lot of laughs, naps and hard work, and we are definitely ready for our challenge tomorrow.
Tina Berger and Delaney Radican, incoming seniors at Noblesville High School, will be writing a series of articles about the Noblesville Swim Club’s annual Senior Trip. The swimmers are training at the University of Tennessee this year, and then compete in a swim meet. Be sure to read the Reporter to see more of their articles. (Photo by Melinda Stephan)