How to Combat A Covid-Riddled Season

Written By: Michael Greisl

We have all been asked throughout the last year, “how did your season go?”, and our most common response was, “We did the best we could for what this year was.” At least that was my response, not to say that this is a bad response or a good one, it’s just the way this COVID year has gone. We saw a good number of programs being cut, and even whole institutions closing their doors because, don’t mind the pun, they couldn’t stay afloat during the pandemic. Otherwise, programs and conferences who opted out of this season just due to the safety of the students and the total uncertainty this past year has brought us. If you were one of the lucky programs to be able to pull off a season, whether it be one semester or the whole year, there were many challenges and obstacles teams had to face just to have a safe and fun season.

In this article, I am going to go over what we did as coaches to make this season a productive one and the ways we combatted the pandemic. I also want to talk about the athlete’s perspective and how they handled a longer season than they have ever had in the past. What was their mentality through all of this, and how to be mentally tough through an adverse season that seemingly did not have an end.

At Mount Union, a small Division 3 college in Northeast Ohio, we did not know what to expect leading up to the season. We were one of the lucky schools that actually had in-person classes, as well as online, we had students on campus, ready to go! That did not mean that we were “ready to go”, we still had to figure out logistically when we were going to have our first sanctioned practice. We had to rethink the season because instead of a 19-week competitive season, we had to format it into 114 days. That may not seem like a drastic change, but we have done it one way for so long, and the athletes are used to that one format, it is not easy to just hit a switch and be ready to go.

There was a lot of strategy put into picking days of practice. In the beginning, we were not even sure if we were going to have a second semester or even a date for our conference meet. First strategy we had to talk about were our actual practice days. We had to make a conscious effort to not burn out our days too early, because if we did have a second semester, (and we did), that is when the bulk of our training would come. Secondly, after going through our training schedule, we had to figure out when we were going to hit our peak training. In a normal 19 week season, we knew exactly when to hit our most intense training and the amount of taper needed to succeed at the end of the season. Now, with only 114 days, we had to strategically balance peak training and our taper. With an elongated season, we did not want to wear the athletes out too early, leading to a missed taper. It was a whirlwind of a year with a lot of trial and error, but in the end we found balance in our training and made the most out of everything this past year has thrown at us.

Our conference, The Ohio Athletic Conference (OAC), made the decision to only have in conference competition for the second semester. For us that meant only four dual meets, because we have a smaller conference. Also we made the decision to push the conference meet back one month, making the season that much longer.

The most important aspect of our sport (to me) is the competition, and without competition it is hard to find the motivation to just train for months at a time, athletes and coaches alike. Our top concern for the majority of the first semester was trying to find ways to get in some race pace competition. As some of you know, a lot of programs were hosting virtual meets, and though it is not direct competition, it is still good to put your times up against someone else who is not your teammate. I was a big fan of the ISL format, especially the skins matches. For anyone who does not know what the skins matches are, it is basically a knockout format with 50’s. If you have a six lane pool, you race six people and the slowest two get bumped. Now you are down to four, then you go to two until there is only one left standing. So we started doing skins matches for lactate practices. We basically did all four strokes, with a prelims and finals. The A final of each stroke was the actual skins match, we got the top six for each stroke. It was a fun way to get a lot of races in and the athletes took to it very well, needless to say it was a big hit this year.

All in all, we had a pretty successful season! Getting through “Florida training” in Ohio was a big task, but I would say we did a good job of bringing a Florida vibe to the pool for that week. We bought beach themed window wrap to give the feel of the beach at practice. We also conducted our annual talent show at Mount Union’s theater. The talent show was streamed on Instagram live for all of our followers to enjoy. Our conference meet went off without a hitch, and it was good to see some fast swimming from a season that had so much uncertainty to it.

As coaches we need to keep adapting to whatever the world is throwing our way. Our biggest concern should be the athletes that we coach, that is why we needed to make our season as close to a normal year as possible. It should not have mattered how much time it took away from us, with long, extended hours on deck. As long as our athletes could train and compete at a high level, we knew we were doing our job as coaches.

To an athlete, this past year could have been a complete blow off season. When is the season going to start? Is it going to have an end? Are we just going to train all season long without any real competition? What if we get COVID, is our season just over? These were some of the more common thoughts running through their heads, and it is easy to lose focus and motivation for the season. The one thing I kept reiterating throughout the season was, just be grateful to be in the water right now. There were a lot of programs that did not have this opportunity, so I did not want them to squander it. I wanted them to take advantage of every practice and race, because we just did not know how long it was going to last.

The first semester was more of a wait and see. There was not a lot that the athletes could control, and I think that the lack of control and uncertainty severely weakened their motivation. There was not a clear light at the end of the tunnel, and you could not blame them for not having the right motivation to move forward. I tried putting myself back in their shoes as an athlete going through this, and I don’t know if my thought process would be different from theirs. So, as their coaches, we really had to make sure we are spicing things up in practice, doing different things that we might not really do if we had a full season. We were trying to break up the monotony of practice, just so they did not go crazy staring at black line for hours on end.

Adversely, the lingering thoughts of COVID still weighed heavy on their season. Being quarantined in your dorm or room and not being able to live life like a regular college student really messes with your mental state. There was so much of the same routine that they just could not break away from. So when they came to practice we tried to break up the routine as much as possible. We tried more dry-land before we got in the pool. I implemented more HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) sets to get them warmed up for a more intense practice. They could use practice as a little two-hour escape from the real world. We as coaches could not let them get bogged down by the negatives. We kept practices light and fun, while focusing on getting them prepared to have a full second semester!

To sum this all up, COVID SUCKS! But we all knew this. Athletes and non-athletes alike went through the same challenges on campus.The goals were clear: don’t let this pandemic get the best of you, break up the mundane, do something slightly different to your routine. Do not let your mental health suffer because there are factors outside of your control, no one can hurt you, but you at that point. Everyone has the power and the resilience to overcome, but it may take some help from others. Do not be afraid to ask for help, because one way or another we all get by with a little help from our friends.

I spent my first two seasons coaching at the University of Mount Union, a Division III program in Alliance, Ohio. I started writing and organizing practices and recruiting future student-athletes. In my time at Mount Union, the women’s team won two conference titles, broke twelve school records on the Men’s and Women’s teams, and had two NCAA qualifiers. We had our first female All-American swimmer since 1990; she placed 15th in the mile at the 2016 NCAA Championships. I came back in December of 2018 and continued to improve upon what I helped build in the years prior. I helped set seven new school records, with a conference record and champion in the 800 free relay in 2020, first conference record with a relay in school history. In between my two stints at the University of Mount Union, I coached two seasons in 2017 and 2018 as the Assistant Coach at Limestone College, a Division II program in Gaffney, South Carolina. At Limestone I took the men’s team to a third place finish in a very strong Bluegrass Mountain Conference. In the two seasons at Limestone I qualified three athletes for the NCAA championships in the 2017 and 2018 seasons, with two of them earning top eight All-American honors in 2017. I also qualified six relays for the NCAA championships, with five relays earning top sixteen All-American honorable mention honors in 2017. I also learned how to budget scholarship money and recruit international swimmers. I was also a four-year letterwinner in the pool at Mount Union as he was a five-time All-Ohio Athletic Conference honoree and part of four school records in relay events along with the school record in the 200 Freestyle.