Bucknell University Athletics
Bucknell Men's Swimming and Diving Blog - David Magaro
10/29/2009 8:00:00 AM | Men's Swimming and Diving
Oct. 29, 2009
Before our first "official" meet of the season against George Mason, Coach Dan told us that we were supposed to lose the meet based on the meet results that Mason had posted in their early season competitions and the one "warm-up" meet that we had against UMBC. Naturally, this provoked some serious thought in me. Now, I know I am not the only one that did this, but I went onto George Mason's athletic site and snooped around for bit and looked up some of their diver's personal bests. Judging by my collegiate debut score against UMBC, I was supposed to fall near the bottom in both of my events. This would create a huge point deficit for my teammates to make up if things went out as they were supposed to.
Luckily, like Coach said, meets aren't swam/dove on paper. I ended up holding my own against their divers (who are the CAA conference champ and runner-up, by the way) on both boards. Now, being at the other end of the pool, I don't really have much of an opportunity to cheer for my teammates and keep track of what is happening in the pool. The only insight as to how the meet is going that I get is the occasional glance at the scoreboard I take between dives.
As far as the whole experience goes, it was unique to my experiences before college. One of the biggest things that I can differentiate between pre-NCAA competition and NCAA competition is the fan turnout. I perform better under pressure and what better pressure than a few hundred people watching my every movement (alright, so they may not exactly be watching me specifically, but if I trick myself into thinking that, it helps). Overall, I think as a team we showed that we are a force to be reckoned with the season. Everyone swam and dove great and I believe that we will only improve throughout the season. GO BISON!!
