No Regrets

"I've said this to my daughters, and I'll say it to any young person out there who is playing sports: Don't ever look back and regret not doing your best. Don't ever look back, because there are no second chances. When you're 25 and you wish you would have done something in high school, it's too late. Don't cheat yourself. Don't cheat your teammates. Work as hard as you possibly can. Lay it all on the line, and whatever happens, happens. But you won't look back in regret." - Brett Favre

Above is an excerpt from Brett Favre's Hall of Fame speech from 2016. "Don't ever look back and regret not doing your best". This is a powerful message to any and all athlete out there with aspirations of doing something great. Whether your goal is to qualify for state, nationals, or simply to go a best time at district or regions, never look back at your practice habits and your meet preparation and regret not putting forth your best effort. This is something that many swimmers have a problem with, especially due to the fact that our season runs from August to March. The long and grueling season can take the motivation out of many swimmers once championship season comes around, but those months and months of training will be worth it when you hit that wall and look at your time to realize that you just crushed your best time ever. That being said, effort is always the key to having a successful practice. As a coach, I will not ask you to be perfect every single day, because I myself am not always perfect. However, I will ask that you as an athlete put forth 100% in every aspect of training so that when we look back on the season as a whole, you will have no regrets.

Looking back on my days as an athlete, both in high school and as a collegiate track runner, I can say that I was not always perfect. There were days when that 5:00 am alarm came way too soon, and I felt like I was moving through mud throughout practice and weights. But despite the rough patches I encountered and the monotonous training sessions day after day, I am now able to say that I was the hardest working athlete that I could be on any given day. I look back at being an All-State swimmer and All-State track runner, as well as an NCAA preliminaries qualifier in college, and I have zero regrets as it pertains to my training regime. Too many times will elite athletes look back on their days of competing and think to themselves, "what if I would have..." or "I wish that I would have..."; this is an obvious sign of regret because of their lack of effort at some point in time.

So I ask you as your coach, put forth your best effort every day that we continue to train towards whatever goals that you have set for yourself. There is no better feeling as a coach than to see an athlete achieve and progress past the goal that they set for themselves at the beginning of the season. However, this is not possible if you as an athlete do not put forth the effort needed to get to the point that you want to see yourself out. So go to bed early, show up to practice on time and ready to go, and leave everything in the pool. During practice, give me race pace sprinting when I say sprint, show me perfect technique when I say technique, and really focus on the aspects of various drills when I incorporate drill sets; each part of practice has a purpose, so swim with a purpose every day.

At the end of the day, you should be able to write down what you did in practice that day, and you should be able to say to yourself, "There is nothing more that I could have done to make this practice perfect". So if I teach you nothing else during this season, it is this; your outcomes will directly mirror your efforts, so put forth the effort in the pool to get the rewards come championship season.

- Coach Rourke