Most people go to Hawaii to enjoy the warmth and calmness of the tropical islands.
But the Northwestern men’s swimming team? They went to the Hawaiian Islands and trained.
Very hard.
Coach Jarod Schroder called it “one of the best trips we’ve had in the last four years.”
Going into the trip, Schroder was worried about his swimmers losing training time due to fatigue and illness after finals. But he was pleasantly surprised when no one got sick.
“We had no illnesses there,” Schroder said. “The consistency of training was really there. We had a lot of guys who took pretty big steps forward in their training level. I think we set ourselves up pretty well for the second half of the season.”
Schroder pointed out senior John Frutiger, juniors Jan Hanulik and Alex Ratajczyk and sophomore Dominik Cubelic as those who stood out over the trip.
The Cats (4-1, 1-1) head to Romeoville, Ill. to take on Carthage College at the Lewis University swimming pool Saturday, and Schroder will look to switch things up this weekend in terms of his line-up.
“A lot of our guys are going to be swimming off-events,” Schroder said. “By that I mean events that they won’t be swimming at the end of the season. Even though they aren’t swimming their best events, I’m still looking for that same focus and intensity as if they were swimming their main events.”
This Saturday marks the beginning of a grueling stretch of meets this month for the Cats. After the meet with Carthage, the team travels to South Bend, Ind. to take on Notre Dame, which recently dropped out of the Top 25. Then, No. 15 Iowa comes to Evanston before the Cats wrap up the month with the Northwestern Invitational against No. 14 Missouri and Denver.
Schroder knows that it will be a tall task to keep his team fresh over this stretch, but says he thinks the effort the squad put in over the Hawaii trip will pay off.
“You go to the training trip and you train at the highest level you’ve ever trained at,” Schroder said. “You come back from the training trip in the best shape of your life, and even though you’re tired, you’re going at times you were going at, at the beginning of the season.”
