The Personal Attention, The Focus, The Resources

The things I keep noticing about this program are the following:

The Personal Attention
It's extensive.  At any given time, there are multiple coaches, not only on-deck, but actively involved in practice.  They can be seeing running up and down the deck, following swimmers along the pool, providing encouragement or motivation in the form of cheering or yelling.  Picture this:  we did a kick set today, I was kicking 50 meters all out, part of this 50 meters was underwater.  Right before I started my swim, coach Mark Hill singled me out and said, "Doak, I want you to go as far underwater as you can, push it."  That attention in itself was motivating, I pushed off underwater with a charge of motivation I've never felt.  Around 20 meters later, I see Mark following me down the pool (I was in the outside lane) smiling, yelling and pumping his fist as I charged ahead of the other swimmers.  It was an amazing feeling to have that level of support.  Nobody has ever FOLLOWED ME DOWN THE POOL.  It's insane the level of attention we all get.

The Focus
This team is focused.  We all have different goals but are unified in the sense that we all want to excel above all other swimmers.  We are reminded of the excellence the team and coaches expect every single day.  The coaches name drop all the time.  It's done in the best way, targeting former or current swimmers on the team who have achieved amazing things.  We are focused on bettering ourselves. 

The Resources
If walking into Canham Natatorium isn't obvious enough that U of M allocates resources to the swim team, I don't know what else to tell you.  Not only do they have a great pool, they have extensive dryland exercise resources, their own weight room facility and new toys are always showing up.  It really hit me when I overheard Coach Mike Bottom talking to somebody about air purification.  It went something like this:  
Mike: "We should talk to **company** about those large air purification machines for the pool"  
Other Guy: "But the air is already pretty good"  
Mike: "Yea, but it could always be better"
The conversation just made me chuckle, because they could actually make it happen.  Another example, we've been using "Kaiser Machines" to measure how fast and how much we can lift (in abstract swimming arm directions).  We used to have to go downstairs to use them.  Weeks later, we got our own machines upstairs.  The resources are extensive.

After swimming on my own with nearly none of these, it's really refreshing to be part of a team where I get attention, focus and resources.