A Glimpse Into the Daily Life of a BHS Swimmer
The difference is night and day between morning swim practices and evening practices. In the morning, when one first arrives at 6:30 AM, hopefully sooner, there is no one in the water and as always, the pool house is warm and humid. Coach Bill Gaebler sits in the bleachers to the left, and he may or may not give a soft, “Good morning,” usually only in response to one. Everyone slowly moves around the pool in their barely–wakened state. The boys take the deck side lockers and deck change using their towels to stay decent. The girls retreat into the locker–room to don their swimsuits, caps, and goggles.
When the time comes for everyone to divide up into lanes, there is an automatic pool hierarchy. Varsity being faster, older, and having more authority automatically take the deep lanes where the pool reaches twelve feet. Junior varsity, composed of mostly all freshmen and a few sophomores, swim the shallowest lanes, the shallowest of which reaches only three feet. Many of the junior varsity members come out much later than the rest of the team, when most of the varsity has already begun their warm up.
The tireless and determined varsity swim without stopping till they have completed their warm up.The usual warm up consists of a 500 yard swim, a 200 yard kick, and a 200 yard pull. If one were to swim 500 yards in a warm up, this would mean 20 laps freestyle, 200 yards kick would mean eight laps kicking with a kickboard, and pulling 200 would mean eight laps using only arms and a pull buoy between your legs. Each lap someone swims is 25 yards. After swimming thousands of yards, and the varsity lapping the junior varsity multiple times, everyone warms down by swimming an easy four laps to ensure that your legs do not cramp up.
Morning practice ends at 8:00 AM, leaving 30 minutes for everyone to shower and dress. The guys only take about ten minutes, if even that, while many of the girls are late to first period for they all shower, wash and condition their hair, get dressed, and then do their makeup. Morning swim team practices are held every day, with only a few exceptions, for an hour and a half.
Afternoon swim practice begins at 4:00 PM. However, as soon as the bell rings, one will see eager swimmers milling about the front of the pool and sitting on the grass. The swim team would seem unable to stay away from the pool. Ko Costarella had already attended morning practice on Tuesday the 13 of April, yet he was found that afternoon hanging out with everyone who was waiting for swimming. When asked why, he said simply, “I can’t stay away from the pool.”
The varsity team sits together in front of the pool and act like nothing less than a family, joking and teasing each other and even giving free massages. Alex Niemeyer, the boy’s team captain joined swimming his sophomore year and is only a seasonal swimmer. Last year, many of the seniors on the swim team became lazy with their looming freedom and so as a junior he was forced to pick up the slack. Alex and many other varsity members feel their coach Bill is very supportive and they all really like him. “Swimming,” Niemeyer explained, “is arbitrary, but the personal achievement is awesome. The socializing is really fun.”
Afternoon swim practice begins with Bill opening the doors and every swimmer changing into their suits, goggles, and caps. In the morning, while the girls use the locker room, the boys do not bother to and instead change on deck. The warm up is essentially the same as in the morning practice and has the same natural pool hierarchy. However, the afternoon practices have ten or 20 more people at least probably more and are much more chaotic and long. The junior varsity captain who only comes in the afternoon arrives a little after warm ups. Mossimo is a very loud, energetic, man who carries an Italian leather satchel. Mossimo yells loudly for the Junior Varsity to, “GO GO GO!” whereas Bill quietly directs the Varsity. The afternoon practice seems to be much more rigorous than the morning practice.
Berkeley High swim meets are held about once a week, usually at Berkeley High. So far, the team has only one away meet at California High School in San Ramon. On most days before swim meets, the Berkeley High team gets to go straight to the pool instead of to sixth period. The meet then starts at 4:00 PM, but before that the team warms up. They divide the pool in half, one side for the away team and one for the home. Warm up takes about half an hour; it consists of swimming multiple freestyle laps and diving. When the meet is nearly about to start, Niemeyer can be heard screaming: “Berkeley on me, Berkeley on three, 1-2-3 BERKELEY!” and at the end the whole team joins in to create a cheer that echoes through the room. The swim meet commences shortly after.
The first heat is a 200 relay, which is composed of four people who each do two laps of one of the four strokes: backstroke, breast stroke, butterfly, and freestyle. The shortest race a swimmer can be in is a two lap sprint where the fastest swimmer wins. The longest race is a twenty lap race which is all about endurance and will power — anyone who attempted to sprint this race would be dead tired half way through. The team captains are given the responsibility of doing the swim meet lineups. The lineups determine whether or not the team wins the race, and can be a great deal of responsibility. “We have all been getting better times each meet,” stated captain Simone Cobb. Swimming, besides the relays, is an individual sport, but teammates give support by yelling and cheering. “Whenever I hear Bill and my teammates cheering me on, it makes me push myself harder and my adrenaline pump,” Cobb stated.
All the varsity swimmers were all very supportive of their sport and had no negative things to say. Costarella insisted that, “swimming can be a learning experience as well as a great way to stay in shape, get rid of PE credits and make lifelong friends. For example, I met my best friend, Eli Wallach, my fist day of practice freshmen year.” Many of the members find swimming is great support system. Rachael Harrington–Abrams, a member of the swim team since her freshmen year said, “I love swimming. Swimming is a great way to push yourself physically, but have a great team environment. I’ve had a really positive experience being on the swim team.”
The Boys are not expecting to win in the league meet due to their small numbers, but are hoping to do well in the North Coast Section playoffs. “Swim team is facing a dilemma,” says Costarella, “In the past, the Berkeley High boy’s varsity team has always been small by nature, despite the incoming talent, we are going to be losing a lot of our valuable members next year. Where there are tremendous numbers of players for water polo, many of these players join other teams for the spring. Hopefully, this article will bring awareness for swimming.” Costarella and many other members hope that in the next years the numbers will increase along with their chance at winning league. Come out to a swim meet soon and support the team!
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