Swimming is a sport that requires a lot of time commitment and hard work; being a part of the Hudson High School swim team is no exception. Swimmers on the team are required to attend up to eight swim sessions per week, along with three lifting sessions. Since there are only seven days in a week, swimmers do “doubles,” which includes a morning practice before school and a longer afternoon practice after school. Swimmers do “doubles” two days per week: on Mondays and Thursdays during the high school season. On Thursdays, however, not only do they have to do a morning and afternoon practice, they also have to attend a lifting session right after the afternoon session concludes. This means that on Thursdays, swimmers attend a morning swim session, go to school, attend another swim practice, lift in the weight room and finally, go home to get schoolwork done. Even though Thursdays can be long and exhausting, everyone on the team is aware that it is necessary for postseason success, and there are many benefits and enjoyable parts in going through each and every Thursday throughout the season.
In order to get ready for a long day, it may require some preparation the night before. Junior Alex Gallagher takes time to prepare each Wednesday night in order to get ready for the next day. He makes sure that he brings a bag with two towels: one for morning practice and one for afternoon practice. He also brings two different swimsuits to wear for the two practices there are that day. Putting on a soggy suit for an afternoon practice can get uncomfortable so bringing two, in his opinion, is better. For food, Gallagher keeps snacks in his car, so he can easily gain access to food between practice and school. “The night before I have my cherry juice before bed and get in bed Wednesday night by 9:15 PM. I always stay hydrated as I’ll have 3-4 hours of work on a Thursday,” Gallagher says.
After a quick night’s sleep, swimmers have an early start to their Thursday. Swimmers get up to as early as 4:30 AM in order to get ready for a 6:00 AM practice. Swimmers typically have a quick bite to eat before leaving for practice. “I usually eat a banana,” Sophomore Sam Stevnot said.
“I’ll eat fruit and honey and bread before practice, which is about 300-500 calories,” Gallagher explains.
Morning practice is usually the easier practice between all of the workouts swimmers have on a Thursday. Swimmers typically do an activity called stations, where in every lane, there is a small set that swimmers have to complete. This could be a 400 meter free for time, or running dives in the diving well. Stevenot says his favorite thing about morning practice is he is able to “see his teammates”. “My favorite part about Thursday mornings is that: “I feel alive and I also know that I am ahead of my competition as most teams won’t have Thursday morning practices,” Gallagher says.
Between morning practice and school, swimmers carpool with each other to get to the High School. East Woods is about a five minute drive. Lots of memories are made during these car rides. “My favorite car ride memory was when somebody forgot their socks and they didn’t realize it until midway through the drive, so we had to turn around and drive back to get their socks,” Stevenot explains. Gallagher likes to talk nonsense with his teammates inside the car: “I drive Aiden Lucyzwo and Noah Bartlett and we talk about NPCs at our school and Mr. Cuva memes to add on. We make up a lot of random stuff so it is really funny with no context involved,” Gallagher says.
During the school day, all of the swimmers are tired. Stevenot says that on the tiredness factor scale, he is always at a ten out of ten. Gallagher says that it, “depends on the week but Thursdays are the hardest day of the week with three total exercise sessions involved”. With Thursdays being block days, the classes are longer, and both Gallagher and Stevenot agree that they occasionally struggle to stay awake during these long classes.
After the school day, swimmers carpool again to get back to Eastwoods for the harder afternoon practice. “Practice is at 3:30, and we swim for two hours. We start with a warm up of 400 meters and then we break into groups based on what we swim,” Stevenot explains. He then details that sprint swimmers usually do workouts together; distance swimmers swim together, and finally, the IM swimmers have their own workout. “One day, the IMers did 17 x 200’s descending 2 seconds every 200 from a 2:30 interval down to 2:00 interval. It was an insane arm workout and I felt like my limbs were going to fall off near the end,” Gallagher says. Despite the hard swim practices, the coaches are always there to support the swimmers; the swimmers also do an amazing job to support each other to get through a tough workout.
After the final swim practice of the day concludes, swimmers have to carpool yet again to get back to the high school to lift. For swimmers, lifting is an important part to build strength to get stronger pushes off the wall as well as stronger strokes through the water. Despite the fact that lifting can be challenging to swimmers, there is more of an opportunity to have fun with teammates: “Lifting is a lot of painful work but the pain feels a lot better when I know I have the technique down right,” Gallagher said. “My favorite part of lifting is the environment there. It is really nice to listen to music while lifting. It makes it kind of relaxed in a way,” Stevenot explains. Swimmers at lifting like to talk nonsense and have a ton of fun; at the same time, they know that they have things to complete so they make sure that they are doing what they are supposed to do, in a fun way.
Once all three workouts are done for the day, swimmers return home and go through their nightly routine. Swimmers have been awake for nearly 12 hours at this time a day and everyone is really exhausted. However, there is homework to do. Swimmers need to keep themselves awake in order to get their nightly homework done: “I splash my face with cold water to awaken my nervous system,” Gallagher says. Swimmers also get some caffeine in their system to survive through the night. “I usually drink a Mountain Dew,” Stevenot says. Grinding through three workouts in 12 hours does not stop swimmers from keeping up with academics.
Thursdays are definitely a grind for swimmers. Overall, there are a lot of benefits of going through a long day. “I like to make an analogy that I’m putting deposits into my bank account with triples like Thursday. It is all built up for the postseason and it is important for the process of trust in Hudson Swimming,” Gallagher says. The memo for the season at the HHS Swim Team is GOGZ (Get Out of Your Comfort Zone). Going through a Thursday definitely requires swimmers to get out of their comfort zones. However, going through this long day every single week is definitely a big stepping stone to achieving goals.
