Swim team offers plenty of preparation
The Olympics may have closed, but Michael Phelps mania will probably stretch a few months longer, and swim coaches on the south side are expecting a larger than usual turnout for their teams this school year. Perry’s Southside Swimming Tsunami is preparing for swim season with swim school and stroke clinics.
Coach Heze Clark has a simple test to decide his swimmers’ abilities. Those who can swim 25 yards in both freestyle and backstroke can join the team right away; if you can swim 25 yards, but your freestyle is a little iffy, you go to the stroke clinic. Kids who can’t quite make it to the end of the pool go to swim school.
Southside Swimming Tsunami
Heze Clark • Head coach
831-2124
Southside Swimming Tsunami will practice at Southport High School on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. Most team members are between the ages of 6 and 16.
The next Swim School ($25 per swimmer) and Stroke Clinic ($35) opportunities are in September. Swim School is one day per week (Monday, Wednesday or Saturday, starting 9/6), and Stoke Clinic is two (Monday and Wednesday, starting 9/8).
Clark is currently conducting a stroke clinic. It started on August 18 and wraps today. They started out with freestyle and moved on to breaststroke, backstroke and butterfly. Next week, they start swim team practice.
“We worked a lot on rhythm, and we worked a lot on kick today,” Clark told his swimmers, who range in age from 5 to 15, on Tuesday. “And we’ll continue that tomorrow.” Of the 23 kids in the pool, only three of them have been on the team before. The majority of the stroke clinic students are between 8 and 11, and his assistant teachers are middle schoolers and high schoolers who are on the team themselves.
“When we first started — when they registered — some had been on summer leagues,” Clark said.
“Some of them just got out of swim lessons.” Some of the kids can just barely swim the 25 yards, and some are what he considers intermediate swimmers. Clark sees what they can do, and sorts them into groups based on that.
Swim team meets start in October and continue about every three weeks through March. They include both invitational (more than two teams competing) and dual meets. High school swim season starts right in the middle of the Tsunami schedule, and IHSAA rules state that high schoolers can’t do both. Middle school swim season, however, starts later, in January, and they can compete on both the school team and Clark’s team. “In middle school season, we see them on and off,” he said, as they have to schedule around school practices and meets, which come first.
