Women's Swimming Releases (2004) First Season - Guilford College

The waters of Guilford's Ragan-Brown Field House Swimming Pool have rarely been disturbed since the YMCA left the site almost two years ago, but that has now changed. On September 29 at 6:00 a.m., while most of their fellow students slept, 24 young women churned the pool waters into frothy foam in the Quakers' first women's swimming practice in school history.

Steve Kaczmarek brings 30 years of swim-coaching experience to Guilford from his days managing teams at the Corpus Christi Independent School System. Over his years of coaching, and through his participation in the United States Swim Coaches Association, he built a network of contacts that aided recruiting. While it's impossible to know exactly how the addition of swimming attracted new students to Guilford, it is interesting to note all but one of the 24 women committed to the team are from outside North Carolina.

The team's novelty surely attracted the prospective swimmers. "That's one of the things that made recruiting easy because it's real attractive for [swimmers] to be on a first-year team," Kaczmarek said.

Caroline Hill '08 (Concord, NC) and Amanda Oehlert '08 (Oklahoma City, OK) agreed. "I've been on a new team before in high school and it was awesome," Hill said. "Hopefully I can set some records."

"It's exciting to be part of something new," Oehlert added. "I want to look back after four years and say that I helped make this."

Because this is a new program, no swimmer will be turned away from the team. Practices are held every morning from Monday to Friday. Though attendance isn't mandatory, those who want to compete in one of the team's seven meets should be prepared to show up and work hard.

While Hill considers herself a freestyle sprinter and Oehlert says she's a freestyle distance swimmer, they'll have to swim every distance and type of stroke in practice. "All of our swimmers will be I.M.'ers," Kaczmarek explained, referring to the individual medley event, where a swimmer uses all four strokes - the backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, and freestyle. "It gives us more depth and more options."

While most teams take time to develop, swimming squads can be competitive immediately. Swimming is not an age-dependent sport where a participant improves as he or she matures. "Some of the fastest swimmers in the United States are 14 and 15 years old," Kaczmarek said. "The fact that most of the team consists of freshmen is not a drawback for us."

With his extensive coaching background, Kaczmarek has the confidence to set high goals for the short term and long term. "I want Guilford to compete with the best Division III schools in the nation. I want [Guilford College] to win conference championships every year. I want a relay to qualify for the national championships on a consistent basis."

For this year, he is more cautiously optimistic and stresses the need to evaluate the team at practice and in its first meet (October 30th versus Emory and Henry) before setting concrete goals. But he expects the Quakers to do well within the Old Dominion Athletic Conference. "From what I've seen of times from the other teams in the conference, I think we'll try to at least be third this year," he said.

- Ryan Early '05