Ask any one of the Utah coaches who has had a successful season this year and they give the praise to the one-game-at-a-time approach.
Utah head football coach Kyle Whittingham led the Utes to a 13-0 season focusing on one game at a time. Head coach Beth Launiere’s volleyball team went on a 14-0 run to win the Mountain West Conference championship by focusing on the task at hand and not looking into the future.
Head swim coach Greg Winslow, however, has had an entirely different approach to this season. Instead of taking the season one meet at a time, Winslow’s main focus has been on the MWC and NCAA championships coming up in February.
“My philosophy is, instead of smiling throughout the season, I’d much rather have them smiling at the end versus being disappointed at the end,” Winslow said.
It’s that philosophy that has kept the team going throughout the season even when it wasn’t easy.
For the men, who won their first meet of the season last weekend, focusing on the end has helped make it easier to keep their heads up throughout the season.
On the women’s side, looking toward the end of the season has made it bearable to push through intense training and the challenge of swimming four meets in eight days, which they did earlier this month.
“Our sport is funny that way,” Winslow said. “It’s not a sport you can be up for all the time. With hours and the training that we put in, your body gets tired, so our philosophy is to learn how to have fun when you’re exhausted and learn to do little things right when you’re tired and it will pay off in the end.”
After a long hard season of races and training, the Utes are beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“I think just going through all the duals as we do and just training hard through helps you learn from being tired,” said sophomore Maiya Otsuka said. “We learn our biggest mistakes when we are tired, and if we learn that throughout the season, then we should be good at conference.”
Despite preparing all season for the conference championships, Winslow said he doesn’t think his players are ready just yet, but is confident they will be before the championships at the end of February.
“If it was tomorrow, we might (be) in some trouble, but we’ll get some rest in the next couple of weeks and I think we are starting to build the mentality where we can be a really good team,” Winslow said. “We definitely know that we are team and that we are there for each other and that’s important I think it will lead to some great swimming.”
Erik DaenitzThe Utah men?s swimming team won its first meet in nearly two years, defeating Air Force 157-143. The Utes look to continue their success on February 6 when they face BYU.