The technique is as old as the ancient Greeks. Coaches gather up all their athletes and take them out of town where, as a group, the competitors can concentrate on their sport.##M:[more]## For the week between Christmas and New Years, the High School South boys and girls swim teams followed coach Paul Hamnet to Arizona State University for their own training camp.
While most of their friends are still fast asleep, the Pirates swimmers are getting up, donning trunks and goggles, and churning out the laps by literally the hundreds from 6 to 8 a.m. Afterwards, it’s breakfast, stretches, some calisthenics, and rest. Then, while their buddies are staggering off to the mall and enjoying their vacations, the swimmers head back to the pool for a second two hour stint. At night come the skull sessions, covering strategy and technique.
“We do it every three years, at a new site each time,” notes Pirates’ coach Hamnet. “You can see the difference in the athletes’ speed and focus. No electronics, outside responsibilities; in short no distractions. The kids love it.”
As it is, the Pirates do not exactly need this training camp to pull themselves out of a slump. The girls team stands undefeated after five meets and the boys single loss was against former state champions, Bridgewater. Like their North counterparts, the Pirates graduated a substantial number of their top swimmers last year. With only four boys and four girls seniors returning to each team, the Pirates have drawn heavily on underclassmen and on the new freshman talent.
But this new talent definitely has showed itself and blended well with the returning members. For the boys, senior Brian Honore has continually scored impressive times in distance freestyle while junior Jay Parks has been ranked as one of the best sprinters in the state. Junior Mike Carman has dominated breaststroke events as has sophomore Hugh Le in the backstroke. “Watch these last two, Carman and Le,” says Hamnet. “Next year they will be unstoppable.”
The girls team also has been stroking the Pirates to a series of overwhelming victories based on a solid depth of power in all events and a remarkable succession of individual performances. Now a senior, Gabriel “Gabi” Feibel continues to take firsts in all freestyle events. In the breast stroke, senior Evelyn Yuen stands as contender for the state’s top honors. Joining these veterans, sophomore Paola Simon has shown a well rounded power in freestyle and other events.
Coach Hamnet takes his teams’ success with a natural sense of pride, but also with a little de ja vu. A native of Newtown, Pennsylvania, Hamnet raced backstroke and middle distance freestyle against WW-P back in the days of coach Steve Redonic. “That was the early ’90s, and if I do say so, we never lost against West Windsor-Plainsboro while I was in school.”
From Newtown, Hamnet attended Shippenburg University where he continued to swim, and graduated in l997 with a bachelors in mathematics. He coached swimming two years with an alternative school in Pennsylvania, then two years for South Brunswick, and has spent the last six years training the Pirates.
The West Windsor and Plainsboro area definitely boasts a strong club system, which Hamnet feels in a large measure provides the power for both high schools’ teams. He admires such programs as the Whalers , but warns parents to be a bit careful about focusing a child’s abilities too soon. “In his early years, the youngster should be playing basketball, football and a whole variety of sports,” says Hamnet. “The very earliest the child should choose to swim year round is age 10 or 12.”
These clubs have particularly brought girls competition to new levels, bringing their times much closer to the boys. By the time swimmers join the high school teams, the boys have filled out physically and retain their advantage, Hamnet notes, but the gap remains narrower than one might think. In practice 50-meter sprints, Jay Parks and Brian Honore touch the edge at 45 and 48 seconds respectively, with Gabi Feibel finishing in about 55 seconds. “But much more important than gender,” Hamnet is quick to add, “is the individual’s drive, skill, and body type. Certain athletes have the right percentage of body fat and shape to be distance swimmers. It’s a matter of gauging and testing yourself.”
Hamnet shies away from early season predictions. Last season both girls and boys won the Mercer County and Central Jersey championships, losing to the eventual winners in the state competition. Cautiously, Hamnet says that “so many things can go wrong in any season, but I will admit that this year we definitely have the talent and could go even farther in the states.”
— Bart Jackson
