Bucknell University Athletics
Bucknell Women's Swimming and Diving Blog - Elizabeth Porcellio
11/5/2012 7:00:00 AM | Women's Swimming and Diving
Nov. 5, 2012
The Bison women came into this season facing many obstacles and one huge transition. With two new assistant coaches and nine incoming freshmen, we had to quickly learn not only about our new teammates but also about how to accommodate such a large team. However, one of the benefits of having so many new faces is that we have had a huge influx of talent, personality, and drive. As a result, the arrival of this freshmen class has acted as a catalyst for some necessary change regarding our team dynamic and outlook and has thus allowed us to begin this season united and determined to reach our goals.
A clichéd description of a young team, such as ours, is to say that is has a lot of potential. Though it is clear that we do have areas for tremendous improvement, I hesitate to use that phrase because it suggests that improvement will come naturally as the season progresses and as the years pass. Instead of passively expecting a manifestation of this "potential", our team has been striving to foster a supportive and energetic environment that will inspire success from each of us. This new energy has allowed women from all grades to step up as leaders and has increased our training intensity. After a couple weeks of adjustment we have settled in to a tough training regimen that has pushed us all to work harder than we ever have at this point in the season.
Our first meet at UMBC gave us the opportunity to show off our hard work and see where our starting point for the competition season is. Though it was a nontraditional format and an un-scored meet, we did have an encouraging performance and remained more competitive with the UMBC women than in past years. More importantly, however, we were able to keep our energy level up and maintain excitement throughout the entire grueling event lineup. Thus, though this was only a miniscule test in the scope of our whole season, our performance at this first meet foreshadows our future successes, which we hope to continue with our upcoming meet against a very competitive UCONN team.
