By Zachary Waltz
Staff Writer
The men’s swimming and diving team has been preparing for the Atlantic 10 Championships, taking place Feb. 20-23 at the Spire Institute in Geneva, Ohio. Head Coach Sean McNamee said the A-10s are the culmination of an entire season of hard work and training for the Bonnies.
The Bonnies rank in the top five for 15 out of 18 events and rank first in five events. The swimmers ranked first include junior freestyler Jimmy Martin, freshman backstroker Michael Pilyugin, sophomore backstroker Vatslav Lets, senior diver Michael Murphy and senior freestyler Nathan Destree. Destree ranks number one in the A-10 in the 100-meter butterfly with a time of 49.50. Destree said the A-10s being in a new facility this year makes a huge difference in how the team is preparing for the meet.
“This is a little bit of a challenge because it’s a new facility,” Destree said. “For the past 20 years, it’s been at ECC up in Buffalo, so we’ve all been used to that. So being at the Spire Institute takes a little more visualization we have to do and seeing how we are in a different environment. We had the advantage of having a dual meet there earlier in the year. They have new blocks and a great warm-down facility.”
Coach McNamee said the swimmers have been practicing basics, swimming less distance in practice and getting a lot of rest to be in top form when they swim at A-10s.
“It’s a normal process of cutting back yardage, raising intensity and fine-tuning,” McNamee said. “We’re focusing more on things outside of the pool, such as nutrition and weight. We’re also working on basic mechanics we don’t work on a lot like starts, turns and body position in the water. We do this basically so we can utilize the energy they have from cut-back practices to cut tenths of a second off in the water.”
The University of Massachusetts Minutemen will represent the biggest obstacle standing in the way of the Bonnies getting the A-10 title. The Minutemen have a swimmer ranked in the top five in 17 out of 18 events and ranked first in one event. Coach McNamee said it’s time for the Bonnies to win a title after UMass has won it the last six years.
“UMass has won it for the past six years, and we got it the year before that,” McNamee said. “We need a change of culture because we have a generation of kids that have come through here and haven’t seen an A-10 Championship. We need to uproot that and change that culture. Our goal right now is to try to shift this and shake it up because we almost have the feeling that second is good enough, and it’s obviously not. I know it’s a feeling that they want to relish for the rest of their lives, and it’s worth it.”
