During the Missouri Valley Conference Championships, sophomore swimmer Alex Howard will provide Aces fans with an in-depth look of what goes on during the weekend. To comment on the blog,
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February 11, 2010
Day One
Today marked the first day of competition for the Lady Aces. While some swimmers find it beneficial to attend a “wake up swim,” which forces the swimmer to get out of bed and begin thinking about the day’s events, most swimmers felt it more helpful to sleep in an extra hour and a half. After the wake up swim, those athletes who attended came back to the hotel and picked up the rest of the team. From there it was back to the pool to begin warming up for prelims.
After prelims were over, the team headed out to lunch at Moe’s and then went back to the hotel for some relaxation between sessions. With several hours between prelims and finals, many athletes used the time to rest up for their upcoming races while others finished homework from the classes they would be missing.
After the break the team headed back to the pool at 4:15 to begin warming up for finals which started at 6:00. Although the team got off to a rough start on Thursday morning, finals that night were a different story. Our moral seemed to be boosted as we watched the very first race of the evening, where Christina Schmidgall won her heat of the 500 free.
From the meet, swimmers went to dinner with their families while others headed back to the hotel on the bus where they had Fazoli’s for dinner. After dinner the team is free to roam around the hotel and hang out. Many swimmers used this time to re-shave their arms and legs.
Swimmers really aren’t joking when they use the expression “Eat, sleep, swim.”
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February 12, 2010
Day Two
The Aces were greeted tonight by the arrival of the men’s team who stayed in Evansville to finish up the week’s classes before coming to cheer on the girls. The guys are great at getting the parents involved with the meet and pumping the girls up from the stands, although their body paint and wild haircuts aren’t always appreciated by the other teams’ parents.
The Aces also got to see Rickey and the parents break it down to “Jump Shake Your Booty” tonight at finals, which is one of the team’s favorite cheers. All in all we really seemed to loosen up today and have more fun with the meet. Perhaps some of this relaxation came after Rickey sang the entire team a motivation song in front of our parents and the Illinois State team in the hotel lobby.
We carried our high spirits into finals, where we had a swimmer seated somewhere in the top eight in every event for the first time in history. Diving also commenced tonight and it was great to have the divers there with us.
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February 13, 2010
Day Three
At the beginning of the season the Lady Aces made a list of goals which we wanted to accomplish. These goals included a team GPA of 3.4, an improved finish in the MVC, and a more united team. After the finish of the last race Rickey called us over and pulled out the list that each girl had signed. He read the goals we had made aloud and announced that we had achieved each of them. It was awesome to see all the hard work we have put in this season pay off.
After Rickey’s speech the awards ceremonies began. Five Aces received All-Conference Honorable Mentions while one received an All-Conference Award. We were also able to better our team score by over 100 points from last year.
Before the finals started the Aces were able to recognize three seniors during Senior Recognition. These seniors included Anna Luecke, Nicky Lodewyk and Ady Sekely. Ady’s parents were even able to fly in from Israel to cheer her on. Because we didn’t graduate any women last year, these three girls have been the leaders on the team for two years now and we will miss them a ton. Congratulations, girls!
