TEN QUESTIONS WITH...

Hailing from Hamilton, Ontario, what made you decide to attend UB?

It was close to home, so I could go home for holidays and my parents could come here for swim meets. When I came here on my recruiting trip, it just fit, the team, the pool, everything just fit. It just felt right and I was the most comfortable being here.

You swim both the butterfly and the freestyle. Which stroke do you prefer and why?

To train, freestyle because it’s the primary stroke we all train. No matter what stroke you are, you train a lot of freestyle because it’s the fastest stroke and the easiest stroke to train, usually. Butterfly to race because that’s my specialty and the 200-fly especially because that’s my best event and the one I have been most successful in, not just in college but prior to college.

Swimming is a sport where the amount of training varies depending on the part of the season you are in. What is your training like at this point in the season compared to the training just prior to the Mid-American Conference Championships held in mid-February?

Right now we do a lot more training, like weights and we do cardio. We swim nine times a week and it is intense, a lot of yardage. Just before MAC’s, depending if you’re a sprinter or a distance swimmer, you start tapering off and lessening down yardage and taking away weights and cardio and kind of letting your body heal and adjust to all of the training you have done all year so that you’re completely prepared to swim at MAC’s.

In the middle of the season, from early December to mid-January, the swim team doesn’t have any meets. What does the team and what do you personally, work on during the time away from competition?

Typically, during that time, we get really intense with training because our team does have to come back shortly after Christmas, we don’t get the full month off that the general students get off. We’re only home for a little over a week, so when we come back here we only have to focus on swimming and we put a lot of emphasis on stroke and quality training so that we can focus more on just the swimming aspect of it in preparation for MAC’s because when we go back to school, we only have three weeks until the championship meet, so this is a time we can really focus on getting every little thing right and just tweaking all of the little details that we need to fix.

You have swum for three different coaches while you have been a student-athlete at UB. How difficult was it to transition from one coach to another?

Coming here freshman year, its always difficult because you don’t know what to expect, especially coming from Canada, I didn’t really know the U.S. system at all, so that was a little bit of a transition. Sophomore and junior year, under our previous coach, it wasn’t that difficult because he had been our assistant coach for two years so we had known him and he knew who we were. This year it has been a huge adjustment just because there are all new coaches and we’re all getting to know each other.

This season, the Bulls are coached by first-year head coach Andy Bashor. Aside from the extremely relevant and high level coaching experience he has, what do you think he brings to the program?

Just because he has a high level of experience and he comes from a program that has been more successful, he just brings a new perspective on swimming and new ideas. It’s sort of like a fresh start for us.

Last season, the Bulls went winless in the MAC and finished 8th out of eight teams at the Championships. What are your expectations both for the team and personally, with relation to this being your final season at UB?

This year we really want to do better and get more success, not just as a team but personally too because it is a highly individualized sport. I mean, we’re on a team but the time when you’re swimming, it’s just you and the water. We really want to try to finish in the top-six at MAC’s and just slowly progress our way to the top and take it year by year. I think that we definitely don’t want to be at the bottom of the MAC anymore, so we’re really focusing on trying to move up the ladder. Personally, I want to medal in my butterfly events at MAC’s.

The MAC Championships bring together all of the athletes in the conference for a swimming and diving meet. How much do you look forward to that type of environment and swimming against the best swimmers in your event?

That’s what we train for all year, every time we have a duel meet, the focus is, we always say, this is another step towards MAC’s and every time we’re in practice, we focus on the MAC Championships. Unlike other sports, when we get to the MAC Championships, ranking doesn’t matter, anything can go in the MAC Championships. Anybody can score, people who haven’t been there all year can surprise people because it just depends on how well you taper because all the teams now, we don’t really rest for duel meets. So (at MAC’s), we’re wearing our best suits, we’re tapered off, we’re shaved, we’re ready to go and it’s really exciting because that’s what we have trained for and that’s the focus all year, that one meet to really showcase what you have done all year, it’s a great environment.

There are a number of newcomers this season that have already made a huge impact for the Bulls, including diver Meili Carpenter, among many. What do they bring and how much do you think they will ultimately help overall as they gain more collegiate experience?

We have 11 freshmen, so it’s a really big class. They’re a very, very talented class. A lot of the swimmers have a lot of speed and the divers have a lot of talent and overall they are going to really contribute to our success. They come in and fill gaps that we have lost in previous years and they just really add a lot of depth to our team that we have lacked the past few years and it really helps to make us a stronger team overall. We have more people in each event that can score points and compete really well, so they’re very needed and wanted on this team right now.

What has been your favorite moment as a UB student-athlete?

Every year, while we’re in training over Christmas break, we always go away to training camp, and it’s the time of the year where we’re away from the University, we’re away from our family and everything and we really work hard, but it’s a time I feel that our team really, really comes together, with the freshman and everybody, we really kind of mesh and you find out more about your teammates than you ever want to, but it’s really what makes us a team and gets us really excited for MAC Championships so I think its my favorite part because…you can’t really describe it unless you’re there, but it’s a lot of fun and you work really hard but you’re all in it together so it’s really, really good to be all together as a team.

The “10 Questions with…” feature is compiled by Jackie O’Brien.