Bollywood

This year our team is swimming to a Bollywood themed routine. We are all so excited to swim to our upbeat music with quick and new choreography. Because this year we are going in a different direction with our overall look of our team routine, we are beginning to swim quickly and with more intention.
In order to improve our skills, we are working on each component of the national team trials standards. Each day we focus no one skill and have a inter-team competition. The winner gets the honor of wearing our special decorated wheaton nose clip for the rest of practice! (it certainly keeps us motivated).
As we are entering our second month of training we recently sat down as a team and set goals for the upcoming year. We determined where we want to be as far as routine training by our training trip in California. Ideally, our team will have mastered our first half of team and will start perfecting the second half. For small routines, we are in the process of picking out music and hope to have them written by Thanksgiving.
The energy of our team this year motivates us all and pushes us to our full potential every practice. With the training program we are following there is nothing stopping the wheaton lyons!

Have a great week,
~Rebecca

A Great New Year

Hey,
I would like to start by reintroducing myself. I was one of the swimmers who posted the blogs for Wheaton synchro last year. My name is Rebecca Gordon and i am a sophomore and a proud Lyon! With our 7th place overall finish at collegiate nationals last year we all have high hopes for this years team. Although we have lost 3 fellow teammates we have welcomed two new freshmen.
This year we are starting off on the right foot. After a few weeks of training we had tryouts. the skills that were assessed along with the tryout routine itself was challenging but nothing is going to stop us from achieving our goals.
Over the weekend we had the pleasure of working with 1996 Olympian Nathalie Schneyder, who helped us write our team routine. We are now going over parts of our new routine and improving daily. The progress is remarkable!!!
We are all so excited for this season and our 2010- 2011 team.

Have a great week,
~Rebecca

Where in the World is Lau?

We've all been wondering what our most recent Wheaton graduates have been up to. Below you'll find an update from Laura Montes whom is competing on the Puerto Rico National Team.
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So, ever since I got home I am training about 8 hours a day. Monday, Wednesdays and Fridays, we are in the pool for 4-5 hours and then the gym for 2 and a half hours. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays we are basically at the pool from 8am-4pm (under the sun, I am extremly tan, back to my tan previouis to attending Wheaton College, lol)

I have a new free solo based on my collegiate one. We ended up changing the music I used for the season because my current coach actually swam her free solo in the las central american games to the same song and her music choice was criticized by the judges (i guess jazzy music isnt well liked in the caribbean region). So, now I swim to this really cool tango music from Argentina.
My new coach has been in Spain and Denmark for the last couple of years where she trained and coached. So she brings a ton of Spains style including the way we HAVE to count our routines which is like this... instead of one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight it's: un, dos, tres, qua, cinq, sis, set, oui, which is a mix of spanish and french counts. It's supposedly proven to be the sharpest way to count. For me it has been extremly confusing to count that way, but im finally getting used to it.
I'm glad to report that I've been able to bring a lot of "Wheaton style" including team unity to the group. I suggested positive comments which we are now doing. I've showed them some of the drills we do in practice and things like that. Also, I am going to be featured in the fall issue of the Wheaton Quarterly about this meet and just did the phone interview a couple days ago. I made sure speak a lot about the things I brought from my Wheaton synchro experience and from your coaching! So make sure you get a copy in August or September when it comes out.
Update on the school front - I GOT INTO CATHOLIC LAW SCHOOL from the waitlist which is UNREAL. So I'm really excited about that, just trying to figure out financial aid and stuff. I havent really had much time to miss anything or process that I've graduated and not going back to Wheaton in the fall. I think once synchro is done and September comes along I'll process it and be sad. But for now it's back to the pool!

GO WHEATON!
Laura Montes '10