My Trip to The Woodlands

SwimFest’09 was an event put on by United States Masters Swimming, hosted by The Woodlands team in Texas, and attended by over 150 people. I was invited to be one of the seven ‘mentor coaches’ with my specialty being open water swimming. My friend Rob Butcher is the new CEO of USMS so he contacted me a few months ago about this event and I immediately agreed to attend.
I flew into Houston on Friday morning and met up with some of the other coaches and staff. We drove out to The Woodlands and met all the other coaches. A few drove in from other areas in Texas, like the amazing Whitney Hedgepeth, and we all got a quick tour of the facility we were going to be using during the weekend.
It was a sparkling brand-new indoor pool, opened in October of last year. They basically gave us free-reign to do what we wanted for each of our stations…except for the fact that I couldn’t use the lane-rope-free diving-well for my OW training because there would be a diving meet going on at the same time!! I begrudgingly accepted an area with lanes and decided I would have to make-do.
The evening concluded with a 2 hour ‘roundtable’ or ‘Q&A’ session with the seven coaches. We sat up at the front of the room and answered questions and gave our advice to the 45 attending other masters coaches. I was a bit out of my league…the average length of time the other six had been coaching was 15 years! The average number of swimmers they had on their team was 200! I laughed when I had to introduce myself as a 6-month coach with about 25 members on a great day…and that was before summer kicked in and everyone headed home to the north!
On Saturday we had six stations set up for the 90 participating athletes to rotate through. That meant I had to give my open water training spiel six different times…in a loud pool, with a diving meet going on, and with swimmers across four lanes. And this morning, we did the same rotation three more times to a completely new group of athletes! Fortunately, I do not have to speak to write my blog! I’m going to take a few days off from talking and let my throat recover!
I had a great time and enjoyed the opportunity to be a part of the first USMS SwimFest. It was a great success for the coaches that got to shadow us at each station and for the athletes that got to participate and learn. I got to see the beautiful area of The Woodlands, TX and swim in a great new facility.
I’m on my way home at this moment, wishing that all the airlines would get with the program and install Wi-Fi on-board. Before I headed to Texas, it rained all week in Central Florida. I heard it continued all weekend and our namesake (the lakes of Lake County) are starting to look a little better. It’s times like these that I’m glad I chose a house on the top of a hill…I know it’ll still be there when I get home! Louie, on the other hand, I hope he’s still around and waiting to be let inside to sleep on his couch cushion.