While Coach K puts together a championship-caliber team each year at Duke, the Blue Devils are constantly antagonized by every other basketball fan. George Steinbrenner found his team nicknamed the "Evil Empire" after the Yankees success in the last decade. Entering this weekend, the Virginia men's swimming team found themselves thrust into the role of the hated champion due to seven straight years of capturing the ACC championship.
Prior to this weekend's meet, the online swimming message boards were abuzz with the potential demise of the Virginia championship streak. This year, asserted the self-proclaimed critics, would be the year that the Seminoles of Florida State would break the heart of the Wahoos. During the weekend championship event, there even existed a clear sense on the pool deck that it was Virginia vs. the rest of the ACC.
Some teams would be crippled amidst the pressure of retaining the championship. But Mark Bernardino, the Virginia swimming coach, gave his athletes the following choice: "You can either be the hunter or the hunted." The Virginia men reveled in the hunted role with the entire ACC trying to shoot down their attempt at an eighth straight conference championship.
Yet this weekend would be unlike previous ACC championships for Virginia. Some years the Yankees lose a prized possession to free agency. Duke must face the loss of athletes taken early in the NBA draft. This year, Virginia confronted the inevitable task of losing a handful of top-notch swimmers through transfer and graduation. Due to these losses, the ACCs would not be a walk in the park for Virginia.
While the other ACC teams salivated at a chance to hunt down the wounded Wahoos, Coach Bernardino simply announced to his swimmers that it was gut-check time. It was time to "check your heart, find another gear."
After trailing by 60 points after the diving portion of the competition, the team was put in a precarious situation that would have given the television legend MacGyver some trouble. Yet in the following days of competition, Virginia managed to find a will to win that can only be discovered through a team coming together for something larger than an individual.
Bernardino pointed to the 400 Medley race as a prime example of the heart of the team. The medley featured legs in which the Seminoles' swimmers had just beaten the corresponding Virginia swimmers in three of the four previous individual races. Yet, when the relay came together, Virginia managed to come out on top in an essential victory over Florida State.
In an endurance sport like swimming, there are times when the swimmers must scratch all the prior preparation and simply go for it. Bernardino refers to the ability to step up as "boys must eventually become men." Luckily for Virginia, in the biggest meet of the year, the Virginia men came to shine.
While every swimmer contributed to the success of the team, it was not the Redicks, Giambis or Fran Crippens (the Cavs' 11-time All American) of the world that ultimately fueled the fire. The win came from the 12 to 13 guys on the team who never seem to get their due credit. The role-players who swim their tails off but never receive the accolades in the press.
Two such athletes, Ryan Berg and Ethan McCoy, found themselves swimming in potentially their last race as collegiate swimmers. These athletes had, according to Bernardino, previously "toiled in the shadows" without gaining much notoriety for their swimming abilities. Come crunch time, they were able to have the meet of their lives and provide pivotal points from unexpected places.
While Bernardino will be credited in the national spotlight for guiding Virginia to its eighth straight ACC championship, there is a more subtle story that highlights what this fierce competitor is all about. In an extremely important relay Friday, Florida State was initially disqualified after a computer timed their exchange as illegal. Since the two judges disagreed with the computer decision and the timer had malfunctioned earlier in the meet, the Seminoles coach decided to appeal the decision. In one of the classier moves in sports, Bernardino approved of the appeal despite the potential of the appeal leading to a Seminoles victory.
"I just wanted us to win it in the water," Bernardino said. Ultimately, the team did just that as it won the meet by the slimmest of margins, eight and a half points. If Bernardino and the Virginia swim team have yet to capture the respect of the other ACC competitors, they need only to sit down and talk to the team that checked their hearts and found an ACC championship this past weekend.
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