DCY Featured Swimmers

Featured Swimmers: Our swimmers of the week are both from Gibraltar School. Sisters Maddie and Isabella Bunda have swum for us for several years. Both have been state qualifiers in previous years and are close to state cuts this year once again. Maddie swims the backstroke events as a specialty, and Isabella is an all-around swimmer with four good strokes. Isabella had an exceptional meet at Oshkosh this past weekend with four best times, and Maddie was close to breaking her personal best times in the 100/200 backstroke. They both come down to swim in the mornings and nights at the Sturgeon Bay YMCA almost every day. The commitment level is exceptional and impressive to all of our team members.

At the Oshkosh meet and the past few meets, DCY has had several swimmers swimming the 500- and 1000-yard free. What we’ve seen overall is a remarkable improvement in our distance racing, with several swimmers dropping 30-40 seconds. DCY had an 8-year-old swim a 500-yard freestyle event in 7:20 minutes! The coaching staff is not really clear on why our distance swimming is improving so much, we really have not focused on this as a team goal, but we are very pleased with the results.

Notes from Coach Mike McHugh: The DCY swim team is in the final stretch this month, with meets in Oshkosh this past weekend, Manitowoc and Wausau coming up, along with our upcoming home meet on March 7. DCY will have a few elite swimmers swim USA State Championships in Pleasant Prairie in March, along with our final big team meet at the Oconomowoc Sectional Championships the weekend before the YMCA State Championship Meet at Schroeder Pool in Brown Deer, Wis. It is a very busy time. The swimmers are looking forward to finally resting in April to recover from four months of heavy training. Swimming is the only sport that overloads athletes for this long before finally tapering and cutting down yardage and practice sessions. In order for any taper to work, the swimmers have to have this level of extreme work for many months. At times, this is a very hard concept to grasp for young swimmers. Many programs that are not successful do not work hard enough in the early or mid part of the season to see this return at the end. The expectation is that a high-tech ”speedsuit” will cover this lack of training and make up for it in the end. It is very easy to see this by comparing DCY’s times with other teams, if they are posted.

Swim Term: speedsuit: A swimsuit that is specially designed to take advantage of hydrodynamics. The suit style is neck to knee for girls and waist to knee for boys. Built for speed, these suits promise to reduce drag and boost performance because of the high-tech fabric and anatomically engineered fit. The AP12 speedsuits are FINA compliant and manufactured for “legal” use in any USA Swimming competitions. With the high tech design comes a high price tag – ranging from $90 to $600 or more, with sizes starting at youth 6/6x.

Upcoming Meets:

Iceberg Meet: Wausau, Feb. 20-22

Manty Invite: Manitowoc, Feb. 28

DCY Home Meet: Sturgeon Bay, March 7

2015 Wisconsin State Regional Championships: Pleasant Prairie, March 5-8

Oconomowoc Sectional Championships: Oconomowoc, March 14-15

YMCA State Championship Meet: Brown Deer, March 20-22

For more information, visit the DCY website teamunify.com/Home.jsp?team=widcy