While the temperatures are forecasted to get colder in the near future, the action is expected to heat up this weekend when the Aberdeen Swim Club hosts its Annual High Point Indoor Meet.
The event takes place Saturday and Sunday at the Aberdeen Family Y. ASC will have 88 members competing. This will be the Stingrays fifth indoor meet of the season.
“They already have relatively recent times established at least for most of them and this will be an opportunity to try to knock some of those down,” said Swim Club coach Neil Romney. “They always like competing at home.”
The short course (indoor season) features 25-yard pools while the long course (outdoor season) has 50-meter pools. There is a significant difference between the two, according to Romney.
“In swimming you are propelling yourself by pushing water backward. The only exception to that is when you get to push off a wall. And then you just have to push water out of your way,” Romney said. “But in a short course pool, it’s about 45 percent as long as long courses are, so you spend a lot more of your time pushing off a wall and less time actually propelling yourself through swimming movements. So it tends to favor a more explosive and more powerful athlete, as opposed to a stroke technician with highly efficient propulsive movements.”
While there is a large of amount of technique and strategy involved, at the end of the day, it all come downs to competing and trusting your training.
“You still have to dive in and go,” Romney said. “The kids who dive in and go the fastest are typically the ones who have spent the time to develop the most efficient movement patterns.”
Action starts at 9 a.m. each day with the older swimmers. Afternoon sessions start at 1:30 p.m. with the younger group.
Romney would like to see the community come out and support the local swimmers.
“We’re thrilled to have people come to our meet,” Romney said. “We know it’s middle of January and they have a lot of other options.”
Romney said the athletes have been preparing for the meet and are looking forward to competing in front of home-town fans in the only home meet of the short course season.
“We hope we can put on a great meet for them with some exciting racing and a lot of fast times,” Romney said.
