Accepted to Club Wolverine Elite!

Today, my first day back with the team after a full 3 days off.  It was the beginning of the fall training for a handful of the college team as well.  I was greeted with smiles and handshakes, it was really welcoming.  One of the pro's whom I've known for months jokingly introduced himself to me since I had taken a few days off... it was a lighthearted jab at me being lazy the last few days :)

It was a welcomed break and I'm glad to be back.

I had a good practice.  It was largely aerobic.  Lots of 200's and 300's; historically not sets I accel in.  I held my own on the freestyle stuff but when I chose to swim backstroke instead of freestyle (for my own benefit), obviously I couldn't keep up with the team who was all doing freestyle.  During the kick set, I was average against the rest of the guys doing flutter kick and among the fastest when doing butterfly kick.

Since I didn't want to wait any longer to know my fate on the team, I approached head coach Mike Bottom after practice and reminded him of our conversation we had a few months ago.  His comment in April before my tryout was "We'll see how it goes for the summer and if you fit in and can keep up with the team, great.... if not, no hard feelings and we'll go our separate ways".  Since then I've clearly made a significant effort to keep up with the team during workouts and make more than a few friends in the process.  My goal was to first achieve a Nationals Cut, I did so at my first International meet in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.  My next goal was to achieve my Olympic Trial cut.  I traveled to Palo Alto, CA and tagged an Trial cut by 0.15 seconds.  The summer finished up with me feeling part of Club Wolverine as well as achieving a time that felt like I was on the same athletic level as my fellow teammates.  In my mind I had done exactly what was asked of me, the only thing left was to see if my efforts matched what Mike was looking for.  I started the conversation with "Mike, when I started a few months ago you said, we'll see how the summer goes, I was just wondering if I can continue training with the team".  He smiled and replied "well, you made your Olympic Trial cut with just a few months of training, I'd say a finals (meaning top 16 in the country) is a reachable goal, I don't know if it's a do-able goal, but it's a reachable goal.  Based on the speed I've seen out of you, you can go 55.xx at trials, thats a reachable goal".  I replied with, "I agree, I think I can do that, I know I have a lot of work to do".  He agreed and we shook hands, I ended with, "thanks Mike, I'm looking forward to it".  It was a nice exchange and I appreciated his honesty.  He didn't tell me anything that wasn't true about my abilities.  He conveyed that I have potential, it's up to me to make it a reality.

I'm happy to be part of a team again.