Oct. 27, 2004

by Sam Miller, UI Sports Information

With twenty-four athletes swimming different events, UI head swimming coach Sue Novitsky has got to be organized.

"There are 18 different events, so not everybody is able to train the same way," Novitsky said.

Consequently she has divided each of the three major swim categories consisting of sprinters, middle-distance and distance athletes according to differing strokes and lengths. Individual rest and recovery periods are also considered.

Novitsky credits her last club coach and her coach at Oakland University with instilling this philosophy.

"For myself, for my personality, that's one of the things I like to be-- organized, so I'm not coming in and flying off the seat of my pants with what's going on in practice. I want to be able to keep track of their training and how much we do on a given day at a certain level--how much we're training at, so I don't over- or under-train an athlete."

Dissection and inspection began well before the regular season.

"Preparing for the meets is definitely a process... Having them continue to develop a pre-race ritual so that their minds and their bodies get focused on the fact that they're about to compete. We've established season goals. Now we're going through and breaking them down--how do they need to plan out that race--the race strategy. When we do some race-pace work in practice; they know exactly what the times are that they should be hitting."

The Olympics provided a valuable opportunity for the Illini swimmers to study the best.

"With having the Olympics just on, you get a lot of good footage of the elite athletes. Plus, I like to look at race strategies of the elite-level athletes and compare it to where we're at to see some of our weaknesses and some definite areas that we can continue to improve on."

According to Novitsky, one of the main differences between the Olympians and her swimmers is fundamentals, which can always be refined.

"Speed-wise the Olympians are faster than our athletes right now. What I can do and show them is to take certain races and say, `This is where they gain their advantage, and this is why we want you to work on this aspect.' There's always an area that they can keep working on. As they get faster, it gets harder, because they're not dropping as much time, but that's part of the challenge. With the training, we don't do the same thing year in year out. You might have to find areas of your training program that you might be able to challenge them a little bit more to improve upon. If you have a freshman coming in through their senior year, you definitely want to keep challenging them so that they can have that opportunity to get better every year."

Because the team is comprised of more than half underclassmen, Novitsky recognizes the importance of connecting with and nurturing her freshmen.

"I try to get to know as much as I can about them (freshmen) through their club coaches and their high school coaches before they come in so I know a lot about how they train and how they compete before they even get here. That helps me try to prepare a little bit, so I know what we'll need to work on when they get here.

"When we sit down and have individual meetings at the beginning of the year, we talk about developing their goals--at the end of their four-year career, where do they want to see themselves? It's a big learning curve for both of us. They're learning my style, and I'm learning a lot about them too," Novitsky said.

Acknowledging her intensity, the head coach is grateful for the counterbalance that Assistant Coach Steve Farnau's personality provides. "Steve is more laid-back than I am. He's intense as well, when it gets to the competition part. He jokes around a little bit more than I do. With my intense personality and his laid-back, we have a good complement to each other. I think our athletes are comfortable coming to both of us if they have any questions. I think we work well together. As we're coming up on our fifth year as a team, we're getting to know each other each year a lot more, and that makes the coaching a lot better."

Helping swimmers endure the long season takes a combined effort from Novitsky, Farnau, diving coach Billy McGowan and former standout and current coach Ilkay Dikmen.

"We talk about healthy eating and how you recover from events so that that they can make their body a good, efficient engine, so that they are replacing everything that they're losing with their training and their eating... It's the little things that we do consistently that help keep the motivation up. We try to consistently challenge them so that they can keep progressing toward getting better at the end of the season."

Ultimately Novitsky hopes her organizational skills will keep the waters calm and lead to a big splash.