Swimmers from Dynamo, Lakeside and Franklin Regional Swim Team soak in an explanation on technique during a practice earlier this week at Franklin Community High School.
Ryan O’Leary | Daily Journal
Indiana’s reputation as a swimming hotbed isn’t limited to Carmel.
Johnson County’s pools have been producing more than their fair share of talent in recent years, and the reputation of the area’s swim clubs is growing as a result. So when two of the top clubs in the country — Lakeside Swim Team out of Louisville and Georgia-based Dynamo Swim Club — were deciding where to travel for their annual age group training trip, it wasn’t a total shock that Franklin wound up being the destination.
Dynamo and Lakeside, both perennially rated among the top 20 clubs nationally by USA Swimming, first partnered up for a summer trip last year, venturing to Ohio State University along with Carmel and another club team from Michigan. Nick Graves, a former Dynamo coach who now works as the head senior coach at Lakeside, wanted to find a site where the clubs had a bit more control over their itinerary this time around.
Graves says a conversation between Lakeside head coach Mike DeBoor and Franklin Regional Swim Team head coach Zach DeWitt during the junior national meet this past winter led to a solution. The top 11- to 14-year-old swimmers from the two out-of-state clubs spent three nights at Franklin College’s Elsey Hall with the best age groupers from FRST this week and went through four days of practices together at Franklin Community High School.
The visiting coaches have been impressed by the quality of the swimming facilities available at Indiana high schools.
“It’s incredible to be able to come here and the high school and the (club) team has such a facility,” Graves said. “All the facilities — the weight room, the gym, everything right here at their use is awesome. We like to think we’ve got a good setup, but this is pretty awesome.”
Last weekend, FRST competed side by side against both Dynamo and Lakeside (as well as Ohio-based powerhouse Mason Manta Rays and Carmel Swim Club) at the annual Ohio Valley Championships in Louisville. On Sunday afternoon, they were quickly reunited when charter buses carrying Dynamo’s and Lakeside’s swimmers arrived at Franklin College.
In addition to the practices, the swimmers were also treated to guest speakers, including Olympic gold medalist and Indiana University alum Cody Miller.
Practicing together offered each of the coaching staffs a chance to learn from one another. Graves already knew FRST age group coaches Colin Mothersead and Paul Stockett, but this was the first opportunity for the coaches to observe one another’s operations up close.
“I worked with Ian Murray down at Dynamo,” Graves said. “One of the things that he would say all the time was ‘be a good thief’ — if somebody’s got something good, take it, use it, implement it in your program. I think we’ve all been able to take a little bit from each other.”
“Overall, the ideas are the same,” Mothersead added, “but just seeing where some of the points of emphasis are and trying to understand how that creates development in certain areas where maybe we lack or we excel. … I’ve already talked with Paul a bunch about where we seem to be strong as a team and where we seem to be weak compared to some of these other teams, and then we’ll take that and move forward.”
Having two such highly rated — and much larger — clubs visit has been a revelation in some ways for not only the coaching staff, but for FRST’s age group swimmers.
“It’s a really nice opportunity to show our kids what’s out there,” Mothersead said, “and that’s one of the biggest things that we’re always trying to pursue is the opportunity to show how good things can be, how hard you can work, how strong kids of this age can be. And being able to get them in with this number of swimmers of that caliber as well as the coaches who know what it takes to get there has been really eye-opening.”
The camp showcases FRST’s growing network of nationwide connections. The club’s senior group embarks on a training trip each summer, with recent destinations including Belton, Texas (former Franklin assistant Sean Barry is now the head coach of the local club there) and the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Training Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Barry has brought his swimmers back to Franklin on more than one occasion, but the fact that two elite clubs without any formal ties to the area sought this opportunity shines a light on the respect that local coaches are beginning to earn among the country’s blueblood clubs.
“It’s definitely an honor,” Mothersead said. “I think Zach in particular, the proof’s in the pudding there; he’s definitely earned his spot among some of those coaches. And I think that as a team, we’re punching to that level. If you look at it top to bottom, we do have some of the top kids here at this camp. We just don’t have the most kids here at the camp.
“To be included and to be in on some of these conversations and have the opportunity to prove not only that we as coaches can work to this level, but also that some of these kids have put in the work to race with clubs that are bigger, that are more well-established … these are clubs that have produced Olympians, and so anything that we can get our hands on to learn from some of these guys is really fantastic.”
Whether Dynamo or Lakeside makes Johnson County a regular summer stop remains to be seen, though the latter will be competing in FRST’s next home meet later this month. Regardless, the locals left a good impression this week as hosts.
“A lot of respect for what goes on here,” Graves said.
