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Swim camp brought out both boys and girls from the Powell High School swim teams in July over two weeks to help improve in each stroke before the high school season kicks off next week.
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Swim camp brought out both boys and girls from the Powell High School swim teams in July over two weeks to help improve in each stroke before the high school season kicks off next week.
“At swim camp we work on each of the competitive strokes each day,” Panther girls’ swim coach Bob Smartt said. “We try to break the strokes into components and do drills that improve the components. The goal is to make the athlete more efficient in the water through better posture, line and balance.”
The camp consisted of a three hour session that concluded after 10 days at the Powell Aquatic Center.
He said the swim camp gives the athletes a familiarity with the training sets and stroke drills that the girls’ program will be using during the 12 week swimming season.
Throughout the two weeks the athletes worked on both stroke mechanics while also building a baseline that they can use once the season kicks off.
“The two weeks of camp help the athlete to build an aerobic foundation,” Smartt said.
But he said that doesn’t necessarily mean just those two weeks will be enough to build a foundation for the season as athletes need to continue swimming during the two weeks of no contact before the season starts.
“The athletes must continue to swim during the two week ‘blackout period’ in order to have a significant aerobic base when the season begins,” he said.
Smartt said that the program has seen improvements in the freshmen, who are now starting to improve in a variety of strokes.
“We see the greatest improvements by our freshmen who have primarily developed their freestyler prowess in the past and are now exploring backstroke, butterfly and breaststroke,” he said.
Last year the Panther swim and dive team graduated 10 girls, with Smartt saying that the team is in search of more athletes to help replace the outgoing points from a team that won the conference and placed third at state.
“(We) graduated our biggest senior class in more than a decade,” he said. “We are hopeful to have additional, new athletes join our team in both swimming and diving.”
He added that swimming is “a great way to build aquatic skills that last a lifetime.”
