Women's swimming coach Richard Quick paces near the water’s edge, eyeing his stopwatch. Swim-capped heads emerge two at a time from the pool’s surface. Sucking in air, the women glance down at gadgets strapped to their wrists, then call out numbers: “175!” “168!” Another swimmer—this one dry and clothed—stands with Quick, scribbling the heart rates next to each name on a portable whiteboard.
“Remember, you’re not necessarily going faster,” Quick tells his team, which is now busy resetting the heart-rate monitors. “Try to be efficient, try to be efficient. Ready—GO!” And they’re off.
Using a monitor to train in different heart-rate zones is just one of the high-tech methods a team member uses to improve her performance. Once or twice a week, she practices with an Aquapacer—a small beeping device worn inside the cap or under the goggle strap—using her “hand hits” on the water’s surface to time her stroke to the beep pace. The Aquapacer, which Quick can control from a central programming unit, helps the swimmer strike the optimal balance between stroke rate and distance per stroke. Then there’s the Rejuvenetics machine, a muscle-stimulation device that uses small electrical charges to decrease swelling after an injury, speed muscle recovery and increase blood flow. “It’s just like a zapper,” says Tara Kirk, ’04, who holds American records in the 100- and 200-yard breaststroke.
Since race outcomes are often determined by hundredths of a second, it’s fitting that technology has found its way into the pool. Both the women’s and the men’s teams have lost NCAA championships by tiny margins in recent years. In 2001, Georgia edged the women’s team by 1 1/2 points; last year, Texas beat the men’s squad by 11 points—the smallest margin of victory since 1984.
“In competitive swimming, there’s a marriage between technology and the art of coaching, and between technology and the art of competing,” Quick says. “I think [technology] is a vital, vital part of it. I use [it] to help me either motivate or analyze what’s going on in training.”
But his poolside counterpart—and friend—has made a different choice. “The little—I call them ‘toys’—that help make swimming maybe more exciting? I would say our guys wouldn’t buy into it,” says men’s coach Skip Kenney. “And I’m not comfortable with it. It’s not my style.
“The guys would have to come to me and say, ‘Look, we’d like to try this,’” Kenney says. “The last thing you want is to ever give your athletes an excuse to have to stop when they’re in the middle of training.”
Gesturing to his computer, complete with large flat-screen monitor, Kenney points out that he’s hardly a technophobe. “The baseball coach and basketball coach don’t even have a clue how to do e-mail,” he says. “I’ve got 320 e-mails, so I definitely know how!”
Given both teams’ dynasty status, it would be difficult to second-guess either coach’s approach. Under Quick, the women have won seven national titles in 14 years. The batteries-not-included men have also won seven NCAA championships, as well as 21 consecutive Pac-10 titles—a record in any sport. At press time, the men were ranked first nationally, with a 7-0 record, and the women were ranked seventh, with a 7-2 record.
For her part, Kirk tries to find a healthy relationship with swim technology. “Sometimes I wish I could just take the heart monitor off,” she says. “Swimmers are racing animals, and a lot of time we just want to get out there and swim. But it’s important for us to gauge where we are in practice. So there’s definitely a balance you have to form.”
