(Image Credit: Chad Klassen/CFJC Today)

By Dylana Kneeshaw

BACK TO THE POOL

After more than three months, Kamloops Classics return to the pool

Jun 30, 2020 | 5:21 PM

KAMLOOPS — Like fish out of water, Kamloops Classic Swimming athletes have been out of the pool for months, but returned for practice at Brock Pool this week.

“March 17 was the last day that we were in the water training at the Canada Games Pool before the COVID-19 (pandemic) hit,” says Head Coach, Brad Dalke. “We’ve actually been up at Paul Lake, for a week prior to this as well. Problem with Paul Lake is we had to wait until the water warmed up.”

Without their regular workout facility available, it took some creativity to keep the athletes in shape. Dominic Amler says he found the land-based training format useful, but he was glad to be back swimming.

“Our coach (Dalke) had these Zoom sessions where we would visualize, set goals, we had dryland sessions online with our secondary coach (Kent Aitchison) who owns a gym. And just whatever you can, really. Personally, I went out mountain biking, cycling, whatever I can to stay in shape.”

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Changes have been made to the practice routine. Dalke says only 24 swimmers are allowed in the pool at a time, COVID-19 health forms need to be signed before a workout, and athletes have to be spaced out. Regardless, the team was glad to be back.

“I enjoy talking with my friends on the wall, and just being with them,” says Trevor Laupland. “Having somebody to race against… training on my own isn’t quite the same.”

“Seeing [my friends] all again and swimming with them but having the social distance rules,” Emilie Reid tells CFJC. “It’s kind of weird to think about because you’re going two metres apart swimming all the time, which is quite different than before, but it’s good.”

The time spent out of the water was used to work on other training areas that needed improvement. Dalke says he’s been wanting to ramp up the sports psychology side of their program, and they were able to work on it during Zoom calls with the athletes.

Dalke and the rest of the coaches also put a large focus on mental fitness to keep swimmers from feeling down about not competing.

“On Tuesday afternoons, I went through 12 weeks of sports psychology (sessions),” says Dalke. “We started off with meditation, then we went into relaxation, then we went to visualization. And we evolved into race strategies while doing visualization.”

For older collegiate and Olympic-level athletes, time out of the pool can be detrimental to the training and competition cycle, but for younger athletes a break isn’t a worst case scenario.

Dalke says many of his group aren’t college-aged yet, so they didn’t have the same struggles with finding fitness alternatives that older athletes would.

“This has not been a bad thing for them because it’s given their bodies a chance to grow. So having been out of the water for three-to-four months, a lot of these kids are walking back through the gates and they’re two-to-three inches taller.”

While the club hopes to be able to host a competition in December, or early 2021, for now they’re relieved to be back in the water for some familiar training.