With 21 freshmen filling its already talent-laden roster, the Virginia men's and women's swim teams head into the season with what coach Mark Bernardino said he believes to be one of the program's deepest lineups in history. Considering the Cavaliers are the defending ACC champions, Bernandino's sentiment alone should be enough to make the rest of the conference tremble, including in-state rival Virginia Tech, who will host the squad in its first ACC meet this season tomorrow.
After facing a national top-five team in Florida two weeks ago, the Cavaliers will take on a slightly less daunting challenge in Virginia Tech. The Hokie men finished a distant fifth to Virginia at last year's ACC Championships, while the Virginia Tech women finished fourth in the conference meet.
But Virginia refuses to take last year's standings into account and is approaching tomorrow's meet with no expectations, except to perform to its highest capability.
"[Virginia Tech is] a vastly improved team," Bernardino said. "They've made significant strides forward over the course of the last five years and they're a real test for us. They are a very, very strong team, and we just have to keep working hard and see what happens."
The early meet against the Hokies is part of Bernardino's scheduling strategy. By opening the season against competitive opponents, the team guarantees it will be tested early and often. The quick start to the schedule also forces the team to find its identity long before the year-end championship season.
Part of the team's current struggles are because of the team's large proportion of freshmen. Bernandino attributes the team's successful recruiting strategies to the program's impressive standings.\n"The better you get, the more people want to be here and the more people who want to swim for the program," Bernardino said. "We've seen that trend over the last three years. The better our teams have gotten, the more great swimmers are interested in looking at U.Va. and being excited about what we have to offer."
Freshman Lauren Perdue is one such newcomer lured to the Cavaliers' program by its illustrious background. Only one meet into the season, the freshman has already made an impact, winning the 50-meter freestyle and finishing a close second in the 100-meter free in Virginia's home opener against Florida. Although the Cavalier women fell 166.5-131.5 to the Gators, the meet provided Virginia with a benchmark going into the season and gave the swimmers a chance to demonstrate new techniques adopted during the offseason.
"I swim mostly with the sprint coach," Perdue said. "He's been really helping me work on my hand speed in sprint events because I tend to have a longer tempo when I should be speeding it up a little bit so he's helping me learn how to do that better."
Freshman Christine Olson joined Perdue as a winner in her first collegiate meet, taking both the 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke. On the men's side, freshman Tom Casey turned in two solid second-place finishes in the breaststroke events, though the men lost to their Florida rivals 159-141.
"[Casey] was a very pleasant surprise for his first collegiate meet," Bernardino said. "He raced above what we would have expected based upon where he has been training."
Although the Cavaliers were disappointed with the pair of losses, the early meet nevertheless provided a positive gauge for the team as it prepares for the bulk of its season schedule.
"It was an outstanding meet," Bernardino said. "For us, it was as fast as we've ever swum this early in the season, and it's the earliest swim meet I've ever coached in my college career. I've never coached a meet before Oct. 20 so to have a meet Oct. 9 was way early ... I told our team that 'if that's a top-five team, we're closing in in a hurry; we're getting there.'"
The larger roster could be responsible for Virginia's elevated early season edge. With so many swimmers practicing together day-in and day-out, there is an added element of friendly competition within the team about who will be awarded spots at the meets.
"The team is better practiced," Bernardino said. "There are more people fighting to be the best ... We're really raising the level of the upper third and above with outstanding swimming recruits, which pushes the top faster."
The new class may fit in with the squad in terms of talent but the recruits still need to work on some other aspects of their game, Bernandino said.
"The freshmen have meshed in very well from a character perspective," Bernardino said. "They're still learning how to train, they're still learning what we demand from them with respect to focus, attitude, effort, performance in training. Those are all lessons that they're still learning; they haven't caught up to the rest of the team in any of those areas."
Though the entire team has only trained together for six weeks, Bernardino expects the upperclassmen to embrace their new leadership roles and to formulate sufficient team unity.
"Trying to bring that many athletes and blend them into what was our chemistry from a year ago is a massive undertaking," Bernardino said. "They represent 30 percent of our team, so 30 percent of our team is brand spanking new. We want them to assimilate to how we do things. We don't want our upperclass athletes assimilating to how [the freshmen] think they're going to do things because they're going to do it our way"
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