Monday, December 8, 2008
Grizzly Award
(And, yes, MHC's mascot is the Lyon's not bears, but I just like the saying!)
So recent winners include:
Amanda McGrosky
Isa Wismann-Horther
Morgan Herrell
This weeks winner though is senior and co-captain Natalia Sadaniantz. We host the Pioneer Valley Invitational. The meet is fun and un-scored. This allows the swimmers to swim as many events as they would like. Every year, there are a couple of people that swim all 19 events. Natalia has taken that one step farther and swam all 19 events for all 4 years! Pretty cool and definitely grizzly like!
Best,
DA
Mount Holyoke Alumnae Magazine
Best,
DA
Monday, December 1, 2008
Lyon of the Week
Here is the MHC story.
Best,
DA
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Ted Mullins Hour of Power
More information about the event can be found at the Carleton College web site.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
More video
Anyway, here are two more videos from our team building trip.
Enjoy,
DA
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
A Video!!
Wednesday, October 29, 2008
Team Challenge Course
So technical difficulties have killed the videos for now. I will try to reload tomorrow. DA
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
Team GPA
Here is the link to the CSCAA list. Here is the link for the Mount Holyoke Story.
Best,
DA
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Swim Clinic
Ten team members spent they day going over the finer points of technique for each stroke and starts and turns. We also video taped the swimmers strokes underwater for review.
The program was part of our fundraising and was very successful. We will be scheduling another clinic for late spring.
Thanks to everyone who attended.
Best,
DA
MHC Featured in 2009 Princeton Review Guide
See the Mount Holyoke story here
Here is the link to the Princeton Reivew
Best,
DA
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Sign Up for MHC Athletic E-News
It is a great way to keep up with Mount Holyoke's teams!
Best,
DA
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Friends of Athletics Golf Tournament
As has been the tradition, it was an absolutely beautiful late summer day for the tournament - blue skies and in the low 80's. Unfortunately that is about what our foursome shot! Actually it was even par with a 71, but far below our expectations. All said and done, Eric, Lou, Dennis and myself had a great time.
We would like to thank Ron Good and United States Sports Camps for once again sponsoring a hole for the tournament. Some of the donation is directed to Friends of Athletics, and some is directed to the team.
Here is more information on Friends of Athletics and the Tournament.
Best,
DA
Friday, September 5, 2008
Athletic Bar-B-Que
We also held our first team meeting before the barbecue and had almost forty people in attendance! That is by far our largest meeting in the last few years. Although not all of the people in the meeting will join the team, it certainly a fantastic start!
Best,
DA
Wednesday, September 3, 2008
MHC Athletic Video
Enjoy!
DA
Convocation
We are looking forward to the start of the semester and especially the season. The team will start practices on September 29th and we are really looking forward to using the updated pool.
Events between now and then include our first meeting on Thursday, which is immediately followed by the Athletic Department Bar-B-Que.
We will also by holding our swimming lessons starting on the 15th and holding a stroke and turn clinic on September 20th. Turns out we are pretty busy even when we are not practicing!
Check out our competition schedule for 2008-2009 here.
More updates soon.
Best,
DA
Friday, August 8, 2008
Swim Clinic Information
Mount Holyoke College – Stroke and Turn Clinic
WHEN: September 20th, 2008 9:00 - 3:30
WHERE: KENDALL HALL,
TOPICS: The stroke clinic will cover all four competitive strokes, as well as starts and turns. Each stroke will be covered using stroke drills, college swimmer demonstrations and videotape review. The newest drills and techniques will be introduced.
WHAT TO BRING: Swim suits, 2 caps, goggles, 3 towels, brown bag lunch, shorts/T-shirt or warm-ups.
APPROXIMATE SCHEDULE:
8:30-9:00 - Registration
9:00-10:15 - Freestyle Techniques
10:15-11:30 - Backstroke Techniques
11:30-12:00 – Lunch
12:00-1:15 - Butterfly Techniques
1:15-2:30 - Breaststroke Techniques
2:30-3:00 – Turns
3:00-3:30 - Starts
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
REGISTRATION FORM
NAME: __________________________ AGE:________________________
ADDRESS: _____________________________________________________
CITY:
PHONE NUMBER (In case of emergency): _____________________________________________________
Make checks payable to: Mount Holyoke College ($50.00 per swimmer)
Return Form to: Dave Allen, Kendall Hall,
Questions: 413-538-2314 or dmallen@mtholyoke.edu
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Grace Bauer Video
This past semester, senior Grace Bauer was selected to be part of a student profile video. It is basically a "day in the life" of Grace (just so you know it doesn't end with 100+ measures of an E major - get the reference?)
All the best!
DA
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
Scoreboard Video
Video below shows the new scroeboard and parts of timing systyem that was installed last week. Thanks to Tac and everyone at Colorado Timing for their help in getting the scoreboard up.
I would also like to thank all of our Facilities Management crew that helped with this project, including (but not limited to!) Rick, Donny, Bob, Jim, Joe, Kenny, Don and Mike. My apologizes to those I may have left out!
Of course, the biggest thank you goes to David Wilson for his generous donation to update our facility!
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Team GPA
We now wait for our ranking among the other swim teams. We have been ranked as high as 3rd in Women's Division III Swimming with a GPA of 3.55. So we are crossing our fingers and hoping for a gold medal!
The submission deadline is September 1st, so we will not know until mid to late September. I'll post it as soon as I hear.
Best,
DA
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Pool Additions
The pool renovations are just about complete. The bulkhead and blocks have been installed and the pool walls have been painted. The scoreboard and timing system will be installed next week and we will be done!
The additions have been great and we have put them to good use with the U.S. Sports Camps Swim Camps at mount Holyoke. We are just finishing up our 3rd and final week.
Check out the video of the pool.
Enjoy!
DA
Monday, June 2, 2008
Pool Renovations
I am off to Glacier National Park starting Wednesday, so posting will be limited over the next week. Of course I am a little behind anyway!
Enjoy!
DA
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Athletic Department Award Ceremony
Last Wednesday the Department of Physical Education and Athletics hosted it's annual Awards Ceremony for the Athletic Department. Each team has awards that are handed out at the ceremony.
The Swimming and Diving Team have 2 awards. The Noll Newcomer Award that recognizes a new member of the team for the significant contribution to the team.
The Ann C. Cummings Award recognizes the athlete that has contributed the most to the team.
Sophomore, Sarah-Brady Stack won the Noll Newcomer Award this year. She was a new swimmer this year, since she entered in the spring semester last year.
Senior Grace Bauer won the Ann C. Cummings Award.
Grace also was awarded the highest honor in the department, winning the Scholar-Athlete Award. This award is sponsored by the Alumnae Association and is given to a senior that represents the best of the meaning of the student athlete.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Pool Update
This includes new blocks, lane lines, timing system and scoreboard! The walls should also be painted in the next 2 weeks.
I am really excited to see all the work finished! It will be revitalized and top-notch facility in a couple of weeks!
Best,
DA
Quick Update
Sorry for the lack of posting recently. Finals just finished and it has been a busy time of the year. We had our annual team bar-b-q on May 4th and the Athletic Department Awards Ceremony on May 7th. I have also been very busy with writing and correcting the final for Sport Pedagogy as well as the last assignment, which was developing a list of drills for their individual sports.
More later!
DA
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Swimming Faster - Stroke Rate
Basically stroke rate is how fast you are moving your arms. It is the same as RPM (rotations per minute, but we call it strokes per minute, SPM). The more SPM you take, the faster you will go. Typically swimmers will tend to have too low of a SPM or the SPM will break down during a race. There is also a break point on the high end as well. When your stroke rate goes up too high, you start to lose the feel of the water and your speed will decrease.
The key is first making sure you have good technique established before you work on SPM. The best tool for the job is the Tempo Trainer by Finnis. It is basically a waterproof metronome. You set it for the tempo you want and either clip it on your goggle strap (with a clip provided) or tuck under your cap. We found it is easier to tuck it in the cap. From there the idea is to match your SPM to the beep of the tempo trainer. We found that the swimmers were able to increase their SPM and maintain that tempo during races.
If you don't have a tempo trainer, but have a metronome, you can always use that at the end of the pool. Just make sure to keep it dry!
DA
Friday, April 25, 2008
Pool Upgrades
The one challenge was the swimming pool was 25-meters, which is counter to the NCAA swimming in yards. This is now going to change shortly. Thanks to a very generous donation, we will now have a fixed bulkhead to make the pool 25 yards. In addition to the bulkhead, we are also installing new Paragon blocks, replacing our Colorado Timing System and upgrading our scoreboard to a 10 line LED board. We are also painting the walls during the project.
We will start draining the pool on May 7th, the day after classes end. We expect to have all of the work completed by the middle of June, just in time for U S Sports Camps swim camps to begin.
This is a very exciting time for the team and college. We are also looking forward to hosting a number of meets for outside groups!
These renovations will make Mount Holyoke's auditorium the premier facility in Western Massachusetts.
All the best,
DA
Monday, April 21, 2008
Relay for Life
We were fortunate enough to have beautiful weather for both Friday and Saturday and everyone had a great time.
Certainly, one of the most poignant was the survivor lap at the beginning of the event. Watching a couple of students participate in that lap certainly puts life and all of it's challenges in perspective!
I hope to post some pictures from the event in the next couple of days.
DA
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Swimming Faster
As your speed in swimming increases, so does the resistance from the water against your body. Unfortunately, the resistance increases exponentially! So it literally becomes much harder to go faster as you go faster!
The challenge then is to make your body as efficient as possible. This comes through working on technique as much as possible.
I believe most coaches spend too much time having young or inexperienced swimmers swim laps for conditioning, which often forces them into bad habits. It is a much better use of a coaches time to work with drills to teach technique. Of course you are also working on conditioning at the same time.
What is the easiest measure of efficiency in swimming - STROKE COUNT. Count how many strokes it takes for you to swim a length of the pool. From then on the goal is to lower that number as much as possible. (You can go slower by taking too few strokes, but most swimmers do not have that problem.)
So the next time you are in the pool, count your strokes to get a base line of how efficient you are at each stroke. Then start to work on lowering that number.
More later!
DA
NEWMAC Sportsmanship Award
The award is voted on by all of the student-athletes in the conference and is given to the team that shows the best sportsmanship during the conference championships.
This is a great honor for the team and a reflection on how we run our program. We want to compete and win, but do not believe we can also show great sportsmanship at the same time. It is something we talk about from day 1 in the program and it is clearly paying off!
Sunday, April 13, 2008
Welcome to the new MHC Swim Dive blog
Best,
DA