Welcome to the BBSC Blog!
This is BLOG is intended for our college swimmers to communicate with our coaching staff while on campus. Feel free to let us know how your training is going, post some good sets, and tell us your times at meets. Good luck at school this year!
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Hello Everyone! I hope you are all into the swing of things with school and swimming and such by now. I know I am still adjusting to classes and schedules. For those of you who may not know me, I am Valerie Jones, an ‘08 graduate of Brownsburg High School. I am now a freshman at the University of Evansville where I am continuing my swimming career. College life is starting to become normal for me, but I do miss all of you back home. I hope everyone is doing well and is off to a great start on the season!
Valerie
Hello Val (and hopefully all the other kids who will be writing and responding to the blog in the VERY near future). This is Josh. Happy to announce that Brittany Batman has agreed to participate in this little project. She is attending Manchester College and enjoying it, and was at practice this Saturday morning because she loves swimming so much! How about the rest of you? Kidding. She’s got her pilots license too so, if you ask nice, you might get an aerial view of the city. Keep posting, and we hope to see more of you on here soon.
Josh
Hey y’all! Guess who! Ha Ha. Lets see… I’m in my almost 4th week at DePauw? Whoa. I officially start swim practices today, which will be a little bit interesting. Practice on a Sunday is a little bit crazy to me, but I guess that’s how it is in college! I like all of my classes this semester. Monday, Wed., and Friday my classes are over by 10:20 in the morning (it rocks!). My roomate is driving me insane… she hasn’t learned that you just don’t touch a swimmer’s food yet! Ha Ha Ha. But when swimming starts, I’ll be in the room less, so I guess we’ll see how it goes. But anywho, I kind of feel like I have nothing to say and that I’m rambling, so I’ll write some more lata! Peace!
T-Fran
Hey, so this is Brittany Batman. I graduated last year and I am going to Manchester College up by Fort Wayne. I am not swimming at my college since we have no pool here, but I am going to get into a masters swimming program. I can’t seem to stay away from the pool. I have gotten pretty well adjusted to college life. I have found I have so much more free time in college than I did in high school, which awesome because there are so many things to do. It has been a great time so far. I got put in an awesome dorm and suite( our living room is decorated and amazing for many reasons). I like my roommates and classes aren’t too bad. Anyways, that’s all I can think of to tell about now.
Batman
Hey everyone! Hope you all are doing well. I’m good down here in Evansville. I think I’m finally into a routine and staying plenty busy. I had many of my first tests last week, which was kind of stressful, but not that bad. College isn’t as bad as I thought it could be. Swimming is keeping me busy too, we have our first meet this weekend! We actually have two. One on Saturday in Evansville against Southern Illinois, and then it is up to Fishers on Sunday for a meet against Butler, Valpo, and St. Louis. I’m really looking forward to going to a familiar pool. Katie Rader will be there too, so it will be fun to see her swimming also. I really have no idea of what to expect for my first college meet, but I figure it can’t be that different than any other swim meet. I’m also excited that my parents will be able to be at both meets since I haven’t seen them since I left. (And getting a dinner away from the dining hall when they come won’t be too bad either!) Last weekend my roommate hosted one of the recruits we had, which was fun! It did seem a little weird though because it feels like we were just the ones looking at colleges and now we are the ones hosting others. Oh well. Tonight is a big night on campus for Aces Athletics as the men’s soccer team hosts IU (which hasn’t happened since 1998), so that should be fun. People here really get excited about soccer because we have no football team, so soccer is the big sport. Other than that, nothing much exciting going on here. I’ll be home for fall break in two weekends, and I can’t wait to see everyone!
Valerie
Hey guys! Fall break! Yeah! So what happened to the warm weather? I’m sick of being cold already! Oh, well, that and the heat in my dorm room doesn’t work (I’m told its just not on in the building, but hello?! I swim, I’m wet, I don’t like being cold). I’m heading home in a few hours which I’m psyched about! It been kind of lonely on campus because everyone except the athletes got to go home on Friday, but I guess I should consider myself lucky because the guys swim team doesn’t get to go home at all really. Last night we had a bonfire with them. It was a blast! Lets see… what else…? Oh! We have our first meet in a couple weeks (Nov. 1 at Louisville) and then one the next day at home (Nov. 2). Y’all should come check that one out. It’ll be sweet.
Anyway…
School is going great. I had to move dorm rooms, and now live in a single, but I won’t get into that on here. We had our midterm last week. It was a little stressful, but nothing killer… just a lot of papers to write, tests to study for and whatnot. I think they went pretty well, though. *fingers crossed*. But anywho. I should probably get packing so I can bolt after practice is over this afternoon. I might drop by the pool later this week… who knows. See y’all soon!
T-Fran
This is Madeline. Are you aloud to post questions on this thing??? I don’t know, but I am going to anyway. I have heard a lot of the college swimmers talking about college swim meets…what are they like? Are they closer to BBSC meets, or Jr. High and High School meets? It sounds like fun. How do dorms work? Do they just tell you where to go, or do you sign up, or what? Does anyone on BBSC go to IU? Sorry, I have a lot of questions.
Hey guys, this is Coach Josh. Just trying to keep the conversation going on here, and I’m glad to see one of our club swimmers trying to squeeze some knowledge out of our alumni! Yes, Madeline (Ketchem), you guys are allowed to post here and ask questions. So encourage the other kids to do so.
For all the college kids, I put a list of our active college swimmers in this week’s blast to the club. I’ll include that list here.
Currently swimming in college are: Adam Dale (Ball State); Taryn Francissen (DePauw); Valerie Jones (Evansville); Tyler McGowan and Ben Smith (IUPUI); Kaylin Kennedy and Colleen Rader (University of Indianapolis); Katie Rader (Valparaiso) and David Birrer (Wabash).
If you’re already posting on here, good for you! If you know how to contact our other alumni who aren’t posting or who might be unaware of the blog, tell them about it so they can start adding to the list.
As always, good luck to all of you guys as your meet schedule starts to pick up, and don’t be a stranger around the pool deck. Keep me posted!
Hey Madeline, this is Brittany Batman. I can’t tell you about the meets in college since we don’t have a team here, but as far as the dorms, ours are first come first serve. So you get a paper in the summer or so that lists all the dorms, you rate in order the ones you want to stay in and then about two or three weeks before classes start you get your room and roommate assignment. While the dorms are first come first serve, upperclassmen do tend to get better rooms unless you get lucky. I got lucky this year and got into a suite with upperclassmen.
Anyways, I went to my first practice two weeks ago with FWA (fort wayne aquatics) for the masters program and it is pretty cool. The coach is a nice guy and everyone is super friendly. I plan to go back this weekend and am excited to see get back in the pool.
Hey great to hear from some club members! Go Madeline! In response to what you asked, it was similar for me about the dorms and what Brittany said. We ranked our choices in what order we wanted, then they assigned us a roommate and dorm. For me, our coach pairs up all the freshman swimmers together as roomies, unless you want to room with someone else. It is really nice to have a roommate that is a swimmer for scheduling purposes and all (and if one of us oversleeps for morning practice, the other is there to wake them up!). The room next to us is two swimmers also so that is a lot of fun. The freshmen do however typically get the top floor, at least where I go (the stairs can be very mean to the legs after a hard practice too, haha!!) I can give you my opinion on college meets, and hopefully some of the upperclassmen on here will post too since they have been through a couple seasons of it, and I have only just begun. College meets are a lot a fun! They are a little mix of both high school and club meets. The whole team atmosphere concept is much more like high school meets where everyone is up and cheering and has a lot of team support. One of my favorite things about my college team is how supportive everyone is of each other, it’s awesome! Most meets are only two or three teams, which is also like high school meets. The events are similar to club events (100/200 of strokes, 200/400 IM, 50-1650 free), they don’t do all of the events at a dual meet usually, it just changes depending on the meet. Hopefully after I’ve had a few more meets I can be more helpful, but so far I love swimming in college! On another note, we just had two meets this weekend. They both went well. We lost the first one, but as a team put up some good swims. The most exciting race was when one of my teammates broke our school record in the 1000. Today, we won our meet though. As for me, I’ve been swimming a lot of breaststroke and a little bit of sprint free. It’s nice to only have a few events to focus on now. Well, I can’t think of anything else for now! I hope everyone is doing great, and I hope we hear from some of you on here soon. Good luck to all the high school swimmers who are starting here in a week or two.
-Valerie
Hey Y’all! This is just a quick post to tell y’all my home meets…
Sun. Nov 1– Washington U. @ 1:00 pm
Sat. Nov 8– Wittenberg @ 3:00 pm
Fri. Nov 21– Wheaton College @ 5:00 pm
Fri. Dec 5– ??
Sat. Dec 6– DePauw Invite (Prelims @ 9:30 am; Finals @ 6:15 on Friday and 4:30 on Saturday)
Sat. Jan 31– University of Chicago @ 1:00 pm
Talk to y’all later! (Time for homework… yuck)
T-Fran
Wow! It’s been awhile since I’ve been on here, but not much new has been happening. I’ve been keeping super busy with everything. That’s one thing I’ve noticed a lot. I don’t have much down time in college, but I guess that’s good because I’d rather be busy than bored. Our season is well underway, and it seems as we are already nearing our Christmas training trip. I can’t believe my first semester at college is almost over! We start finals this coming week! Ahhh! Lots of studying to do, but I’m really looking forward to having finals done with. Then, I’ll be able to come home for a week and not have anything to worry about getting done. Yay! After Christmas, it’s right back to training as we have our training trip right after the holiday. We are going to Louisiana this year, which should be fun, but I’m a little disappointed because last year they went to California
Oh well, they said it wasn’t warm anyway, haha. Well, hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving and I can’t wait to see all of you over Christmas break!
Valerie
Hello everyone! Just an update from down here in Evansville. I am now into my second semester of classes and am already nearing the end of my first season as a college swimmer. It’s amazing how fast time flies! Christmas break was awesome. I really enjoyed my time at home and was very happy to be back in the pool at home for a week training with my home team. I miss you guys so much! I was also able to have some quality family time over the holiday and the best part being the home-cooked meals
While it was nice to be home, the day after Christmas it was right back down here to Evansville in order to leave for training trip on the 27th. We went to New Orleans, which was super fun! The facilites we trained at were very nice and it was so awesome to swim outdoors in December, such a good change of pace for awhile. It was some intense training, but it was fun too. We got to go on a swamp tour one day and see the city one other day. My favorite part though may have been the chance for great team bonding. It’s funny how in college the team is so different because you live with these people, eat with them, swim with them, and see them pretty much every day, so you really get a chance to know your teammates really well. It was especially nice that we didn’t have classes or anything to worry about either, which took away a lot of the stresses that are there during the semester. Overall, I’d say the trip was a huge success and was tons of fun, but all good thing must come to an end, and before long classes started and it was back to the same old routine. Now, however, championship season is coming closer, our conference is in three and a half weeks! It’s so exciting and nerve wracking all at the same time. It’s hard to know what to expect as a freshman, but I’m sure it won’t be too different from any other championship meet, so I’m not too worried about it. I know champs are coming up quickly for everyone back home too, and I wanted to wish all the high schoolers good luck at sectionals in the next couple of weeks! That is about it for now, so good luck to everyone on the end of the season and hope you are all doing great!
-Valerie
Oh my gosh… I’m still alive, I promise. So right now I’m sitting here taking a very unnecessary break from math homework… but I was tired of thinking (and since I haven’t written in forever, just thought I would say hi). So swim season ends in about 3 weeks. That’s still so weird to think about. It went really fast! Our conference meet is in Nashville which I am soooooooo excited about (but…. its over Valentine’s Day… not that that affects me… but whatever)! Have I mentioned that I pretty much have been living in the training room this season? Ha ha. Its all good though. We have a really cool trainer. What else has been going on…?
Oh! Our training trip was a blast. I mean… it just doesn’t get much better than sitting on a beach in the middle of December. Everyone else that was there thought that we came from Europe (because the guys wore their speedos to the beach) or that we were part of a band. It was kind of amusing.
I apologize for not stopping by the pool in a while… but everytime we have a break (Christmas, Thanksgiving, and whatnot), I’m told to do minimal swimming. I’ll get back and say hi to y’all in person soon, though.
Well, I should probably finish up my math (considering it’s due in the morning). That was a boring post, lol.
Catch y’all later!
T-Fran