Meet Wrap: Ursaline/MND

This will be the first "meet wrap" I've written up for McAuley swimming.  A meet wrap is an opportunity for me to share some insights following a competition and hopefully offer a few tips for the upcoming week.

First - with this meet we entered the second third of our season - after one of the best starts to a season in recent history.  In our Best of the West performance we approached our races with confidence and intensity demonstrating the depth of talent present on the team this season.

Upon reflecting on the Ursaline/MND tri-meet my first impulse was to complain about the pace the meet was conducted.  I admit I was caught off guard with how quickly the meet progressed.  Having coached club swimming for the past 9 years I had forgotten how quick these smaller meets can run.  However, regardless of the timing of the meet a notable weaknesses was exposed within our team.

Confidence under pressure/stress :  meets offer a special type of stress that must be effectively managed in order to perform at our best.  This particular meet combined with the pressure of upcoming exams offered a double dose of anxieties which we were not prepared to handle.

Learning Opportunity - what can you do to keep your nervousness under control (or even better - use it to your advantage!)  Learning to deal with pressure is a SKILL and we all know that mastering any skill takes lots of practice.  Please read the following articles.

Here is a short article I think does a nice job of explaining why we feel nervousness and some simple solutions.

Here is a great article specific to swimmers and their anxiety surrounding meets.

As mentioned in the second article, in order to be prepared for our championships at the end of the season we must use these early duel/tri meets as "practice" - fine tuning the strategies we need to perform at our highest level.  The conditions will not always be ideal - we may not have as much rest between races as we might like, there may not be warm down facilities available, etc. but how we approach each race mentally can be rehearsed under these less than ideal conditions - then we can draw on those positive habits at the end of the season.

Official results will be available soon from this meet and will be posted on on the Times/Results page.  I'm excited to being this next phase of the season and look forward to a lot of fun and challenging practices to test ourselves physically and mentally in the upcoming weeks!  Happy Holidays