(Letter to the Editor - Graphic Illustration/MetroCreativeConnection)

Competitive long course swimming is much tougher than competitive short course swimming. For swimmers going from short course yards to long course meters, the difference is even more profound. Without the walls to save the swimmer about a dozen strokes, it forces the swimmer to maintain a rhythm, stroke length, and stroke rate over more than double the distance.

If one aspires to competing at the elite level of the sport at some point in their career, they will be racing in the long pool; the 50m pool is also the same pool the Olympic competitions are held in. If one wants to swim against the Phelps, Franklins, the Lochtes and the Campbell types of the world, eventually one will have to step into the same pool.

Short course swimming covers up technique flaws. With strong walls and underwaters, one can hide the soft spots in one’s swimming technique with long underwaters. However, long course swimming exposes the weaknesses in ones’ swimming technique. Now considering that short course races can be performed up to 50% using underwater dolphin kicks, one quickly realizes that the importance of swimming technique is diminished in the short pool compared to the long pool where only up to 30% of the race can be swam underwater.

For most swim programs, the long course training and racing season comes after six months of short course swimming. Racing long course is different and requires a different strategy; simply put long course is slower. For swimmers new to the sport there is a moment of astonishment when they come to understand that a 0:25 second short course swim doesn’t instantly transfer over to a 0:25 second-long course result.

Long course training is often available only during early morning workouts, as is the case with our Southwood pool during the summer months, due to pool space limitations later in the day. Many world-great swimmers have trained in facilities that are not great, but at least they had a facility to train in. Please don’t take the Southwood long course pool away from our local student athlete swimmers. Doing so will place our swimmers at a huge disadvantage against swimmers from other states if our kids are fortunate enough to qualify and compete on a national level such as in Zones or at Nationals.

Perhaps an alternative would be to have the local cities, the Wood County Commission, and the state look at an aquatic center facility that could be shared among various groups similar to what other WV cities (Bridgeport, WV; Morgantown, WV; others) have done to attract families to want to move/stay in the area?

Henry Sasyn

Vienna