Thursday, November 06, 2008
Many college students celebrated Halloween by donning scary costumes or posing as some of the year’s most buzzworthy celebrities, but the Translyvania University swim team could have been mistaken for dressing up as the Madisonville-North Hopkins team.
Six different former Maroons participated in the Pioneers’ season-opening swim meet on Friday against Washington and Lee University.
The meet marked the beginning of collegiate careers for brothers Joseph and Stephen Porter as well as Yunan Yang. The trio joined Daniel Porter and girls’ swimmers Maggie Davenport and Rachel Dorris.
North coach Jason Clark oversaw each of the athletes during their respective careers with the Maroons.
“I think it’s really a testimony to this program through the work of coach (Charles) Rothe and coach (Lairy) Nofsinger over the years to kind of build the program up where we’re able to produce these athletes that can compete at the collegiate level,” Clark said.
Translyvania coach George Villarreal paired Daniel, Joseph, Stephen and Yang together in the team’s 200-yard medley relay during the season-opener.
“Coach has kind of been joking about it since there are so many Madisonville people,” Stephen said.
Joseph said the relay’s list of names came as a shock
“He did it without telling us, so it was kind of surprising,” Joseph said. “I think he wanted to see it. It was our first meet and he just wanted to do it just for fun I think.”
The foursome combined to finish in 1:45.31 with Joseph turning in the fastest leg at :23.24.
Stephen said the relay felt natural because the three freshman swam the same event in high school, but just replaced former Maroon E.J. Quijano with Daniel.
“It was a good relay last year and it’s still a good relay this year,” Stephen said. “It’s nice being on a team with so many Madisonville people to be so well-represented.”
Having so many former Maroons on the squad has benefits that transcend beyond the pool as well.
Yang said he’s take advantage of the older swimmers’ ability to aid in his studies.
“They did help me on my academic side, so that would make me have more free time to do swimming,” he said. “It’s really tough because for freshman we have a writing class and we spend a lot of time writing and we also spend a lot of time on swimming, so it’s kind of hard to balance, but it’s not a big problem.”
Each of the swimmers has noticed a considerable difference in the academic and athletic regime.
Stephen said his workouts have increased from one and one-half hours to three or four each day.
“If you want to get better, if you want to get faster, you have to try hard and you have to do it on your own, have your own self-discipline,” he said.
Clark said the group has a passion to excel that is unparalleled, which allows them to succeed.
“They have a love for the sport that I think really transcends a lot of things young people typically fall into,” he said. “They’re very academically-oriented and very athletically-oriented, so that just spills over into their work ethic.”
Yang said he has already dropped more than three seconds from his 100-yard breaststroke time and Joseph said he and his brother Stephen are breaking personal records early in the season as well.
Although North begins its swim season in a couple weeks, Clark has been keeping tabs on the Translyvania A.K.A. “Maroon University” team in Lexington.
“As well as I can – through e-mail, text message, phone conversations, whatever we can,” Clark said. “I like to keep in touch.”
No comments:
Post a Comment