Jan. 12, 2010

BOCA RATON, Fla. - Head coach Sue Novitsky recaps the swimming and diving team's final five days in Florida, as it braved the unseasonably cold weather during its annual winter trip.

January 5, 2010
Nothing wakes you up like a 6:30 a.m. fire alarm at the hotel. It turns out to be a false alarm and then there is another alarm around 8:30 a.m. It turns out there was a smoke detector right by the waffle maker. Like most of the country, Florida was being hit with the arctic air and the temperatures were staying pretty cold for swimming and diving outdoors. The swimmers and divers are both practicing about five hours each day. With the cold weather, there is a little negotiating going on to get some quality work in under the conditions. We keep checking the weather forecast to see when it will warm back up.

January 6, 2010
This turns out to be the coldest day of the trip, not even reaching 50 degrees. The divers arrive at their pool and the stretching mats are covered in ice. Both the swimmers and the divers do longer workouts and will not get in the water for the night practice, with the temperature below freezing. Even though it is cold outside and in the water, the swimmers are able to put up some fast times in practice and keep their focus.

January 7, 2010
It is starting to warm back up! The swimmers get in their last weight workout of the trip and then hit the water. The team is getting ready for our dual meet against the University of Miami tomorrow. The team continues to get in some good work at practice. At dinner we have a team meeting to go through the meet lineup and the schedule. The athletes are ready to compete against someone outside their own team.

January 8, 2010
Meet Day! We loaded up the vans and hit the road south to Coral Gables at 8:00 a.m. It is a beautiful day outside and by meet time it is in the 70s. We arrive at the pool and the team goes through the stretching and then hits the water for warmup. There are three teams competing, Illinois, Miami and Nebraska. Since we have already competed against Nebraska we did not keep a team score. So it is Illinois vs. Miami. There are 10 events scheduled for the meet, the 200 medley relay, 200 free, 50 free, 200 IM, 100 fly, 100 free, 100 back, 500 free, 100 breast and 400 free relay. We were able to take an early lead, finishing one-two in the medley relay. After that we traded events with Miami through the 500 free. We were up one point heading into the final relay and needed to win the event to secure the meet. Unfortunately, we came up just short and finished six points behind Miami. It was the first close meet that we lost this season and we will use it as an experience to help the team continue to improve, especially since we have a loaded January meet schedule.

January 9, 2010
It is time to travel back to Champaign as the second cold front is coming through Florida. We loaded up the vans in the early afternoon and headed out to the airport. There were no delays with the flight and we ran into the Illinois-Chicago swimming and diving team heading home as well. The team made it back to the Bloomington Illinois Airport around 10:30 p.m. We had one lost bag and ended up making it back to Champaign around 1 a.m. on Sunday. The team will be back at the ARC on Monday to get ready for our meet against Iowa.

The Fighting Illini return to action this Sat., Jan. 16 at Iowa at 11 a.m. CT.