Many retirees migrate south to Florida to trade winter coats and weeks below freezing temperatures, ice, snow and bitter winds for flip flops, 70-degree days and gentle breezes coming in from the Atlantic.
The Ball State University swimming and diving team joined the migration by spending the last week of its break training in Ft. Pierce, Fla. The team makes the trip every other year as a way to break the monotony of practicing in Muncie and to build team chemistry.
The training trip was no easy way to get away from the cold Muncie weather and hang out on the beach. Jordan Rantz has made the trip to Florida twice and said it is one of the best experiences of the year for both the individual swimmers and the team.
The team practiced twice a day, each session being one of the toughest practices it will have all year. This trip is also the last chance the team will have to exhaustively train before the Mid-American Conference meet in late February.
"It was a great experience and the training will really help us at conference, which is a five-day meet," Rantz said.
Freshman Whitney Adams said the trip was a lot more challenging than she had expected and training in an outdoor pool presented unusual challenges for the team.
"Training outside presented challenges that I wasn't expecting or that I'm used to," Adams said. "Having the sun in your eyes when you dive makes it really difficult to dive. Towards the end of the night session it would start to get pretty cold too, but overall it was really awesome to be able to get away from our pool, the nasty weather and just focus on swimming. Getting a nice tan was pretty great, too."
Coach Bob Thomas said training in Ft. Pierce is ideal for the team. The pool offers 22 lanes, which cuts the time the team spends at the pool in half.
The change in environment also takes the swimmers out of the monotony of swimming at Lewellen everyday and causes them to train more intensely because they are outside of their norm.
The week also gives team members a chance to focus only on the athletics half of being a student-athlete because they have no stress from classes and projects.
In between sessions, many of the swimmers took advantage of their location and spent the afternoons at the beach. Aside from working on their tans, swimming in the ocean and playing in the sand gave the swimmers even more of a workout.
Coach Laura Seibold-Caudill said the team did more than just train and hang out on the beach. The team built chemistry because they were together constantly for a week. They rode a bus together to and from Florida, lived together in condos and ate their meals together. Each condo was assigned a night to cook for the rest of the team, which posed a challenge to some of the novice chefs on the team, she said.
The women swim team is next in action this Saturday at Illinois State University.
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