By Curtis Gordon

On Tuesday, Laurentian’s varsity swim team returned to training after a two-month hiatus due to lockdown restrictions.

The gaps in training have been difficult for varsity athletes, but Cameron McCabe, a fourth-year member of the team, says it can be especially hard for swimmers to take time away. 

“If you miss even that one day, you feel something. A lot of people underestimate swimming a lot,” McCabe said.

Despite the disruptions, the team is excited to be back in the pool.

Nick Vanderschoor, a fourth-year member of the team, said “it’s been different… We’ve had some challenges, but we don’t really notice it because we’re happy just to get pool time.”

“There are only a few schools in the OUA that have actually been swimming this year, so we’re lucky,” Vanderschoor said. 

The team has started training at the Howard Armstrong Pool, nearly a 40-minute drive from campus. This has made it difficult for athletes just to get to their training sessions. 

Phil Parker, head coach of both the men’s and women’s swimming teams, said this has caused the team to have much less space and pool time to work with. Their regular location, LU’s Jeno Tihanyi Pool, has sixteen swim lanes, while now the team has just five. 

“We’ve just had to get very creative,” Parker said.  “Not everyone is getting their 12-15 hours of training per week.  They’re getting 4-6 hours of training per week now.”

Due to the competitive season being canceled, Parker says he hasn’t had to prepare the team through typical training phases they would normally cycle through while preparing for a race. Instead, it’s become more about making things fun and keeping everyone happy while still remaining competitive.

“For me, it’s gone from a performance-based thought process to how do I make them smile every day,” Parker said.  

Parker says that since he started coaching at Laurentian, he has made an effort to create a family-like atmosphere on the team.  

McCabe says Parker has made an effort to create a family-like atmosphere on the team, “trying his absolute hardest to get us pool time” and remaining enthusiastic about the team’s return to the pool.  

“It’s nothing but positivity,” said McCabe, “It gets you excited to get back to training, so it’s pretty amazing.”

IVSL – a creative way to compete

Despite their 2020-2021 competitive season being canceled, the team has found another creative way to stay competitive amongst themselves.  The “International Voyageurs Swimming League” or “IVSL” was put into place in recent years before the pandemic but has become increasingly meaningful this year.

The team competes against each other in smaller ‘teams’ with men’s and women’s swimmers competing together in tournament-style races on the weekends. 

This has given Laurentian’s swimmers something fun that they can look forward to but has also helped to improve performance.  They even have custom-made swim caps with their team logos on them.

McCabe said “[The IVSL] definitely got you competitive. People were pulling sometimes their best times out of nowhere.”
McCabe said the team looks forward to finishing off the year strong and hopes to be able to return to OUA competition later in 2021.