With the hardest training sessions of the year behind them, Syracuse’s swimmers are readying themselves for big performances late in the season.

After nearly two weeks in Puerto Rico, where they swam 14,000 to 15,000 meters per day, the intensity level of the workouts has diminished inside Webster Pool.

‘We start tapering the yardage,’ sophomore Chelsea Bryan said. ‘Around this time we start doing a lot more sprinting and a lot less distance. We are also out of the weight room now, so our muscles are going to be a lot more relaxed, and in practice we won’t be as sore.’

While every SU swimmer will go through this reduction, they will do so at different times.

Starting with the week of Jan. 25, the team divided into two groups, each with a different vision of what they wanted to achieve in this weekend’s regular-season finale against Villanova. For one group, the upcoming meet is their title fight. All of their attention is focused on posting their fastest times of the season and maybe even qualifying for the Big East championship.

The other group is composed of those who are looking past the Villanova meet. To them this weekend is a measuring stick against which they can track their progress heading into the Big East meet.

‘Swimming is a function of a hard training period followed by a reduced work level in terms of preparation for a major competition,’ SU head coach Lou Walker said. ‘So it’s just a matter of staggering when the process of that reduced workload begins by two weeks.’

Bryan approaches the Villanova meet with a bit of unfinished business. Although already qualified for the conference championship in the 50-yard freestyle, she hopes to improve her time and better her seed with a strong swim this weekend. This meet is also her last chance to crack 55.37 seconds and qualify for the Big East championship in the 100 freestyle.

Walker said the kids who are using Villanova as their focal meet are swimming the best they have all year long.

‘Honestly, I’m just really excited to go to Big East,’ Bryan said. ‘Just to get there this year is pretty exciting. I’m trying to make it there in one piece and be able to swim.’

In contrast to Bryan, junior Kuba Kotynia’s mindset is much different at this point in time. Arguably SU’s best swimmer, he qualified for the conference championship easily in both the 100 and 200 breaststroke. Moreover, Kotynia has gone essentially unchallenged throughout the entire regular season. In the team’s most recent meet at Providence on Jan. 15-16, he won the 200-meter breaststroke by more than 13 seconds.

Unfortunately, he feels that the matchup with the Wildcats will be more of the same.

‘It’s hard to swim 100 percent if there is no one to race with, and I don’t think there will be anyone this weekend,’ he said. ‘It’s weird because you don’t know how fast you’re going. I like racing against strong competition.’

Instead, Kotynia focuses on success in the postseason. His times in the 100 and 200 breaststroke are the fifth- and third-fastest in the Big East this year, respectively, and the difference between his 200 time and that of league leader Carlos Almeida of Louisville is less than one full second.

To put that in perspective, he currently owns the 34th-fastest 200 breaststroke time in Division I swimming this year, according to collegeswimming.com. Kotynia is SU’s only swimmer with a genuine chance of qualifying for the NCAA championships.

Nonetheless, Walker has seen tremendous growth by everyone on the team this season. And while every athlete has different goals heading into the weekend, his hopes are simple: swim fast.

‘I really think they have improved dramatically since we started last fall,’ he said. ‘If everyone went best times as we went through this Villanova/Big East period, then that’s a tremendous accomplishment. It would just validate all the effort and energy that went in.’

mjcohe02@syr.edu

Published on February 3, 2010 at 12:00 pm

Contact Michael: mjcohe02@syr.edu | @Michael_Cohen13