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BY ANDY BAGGOT
UWBadgers.com Insider
MADISON, Wis. — The goal is not only lofty, it's unprecedented.
Members of the Wisconsin men's and women's swimming team head into their NCAA meets both looking to finish in the top 10.
It's never happened in the history of UW swimming.
The men have had four top-10 placings: ninth in 1959 and '60 and 10th in 1966 and '68.
The women have had two top-10 performances: ninth in 2006 and 10th in '04.
The Badgers appear to have the numbers and personnel to fulfill that dream when the NCAA meets are staged at the Indiana University Natatorium in Indianapolis.
The women's meet starts Wednesday and runs through Saturday. The men's meet will be held March 22 to 25.
How doable is the project?
"I don't want to say it's not," UW coach Whitney Hite said. "On the men's side we're going to have to be spot-on to be around the top 10. I think the women are a little bit stronger."
Hite is in his sixth season overseeing both programs. The high point in his tenure came in 2012-13 when the men placed 13th and the women 15th in the NCAA meet.
Last season the men finished 18th and the women 21st in the NCAA meet.
"We're seeded to do really well," said Maria Carlson, a senior breaststroke specialist from Livermore, California. "I do kind of feel the pressure, but I'm also really excited to go out there and have fun and race."
Both programs emerged from the Big Ten Conference meet with momentum. The women placed third — their highest since 2005 — while the men were fifth for a third straight year.
The women will have seven individual qualifiers and five relays, while the men have four individuals and four relays.
"I'm excited for this to be our best (national meet) since I've been on the team," said Chase Kinney, a senior freestyle and butterfly specialist from Canton, Ohio. "We want to be top 10, which is exciting."
Both teams have made progress that can be traced to a change in training philosophy. Hite said it came about after a less than stellar showing in the U.S. Olympic Trials and the arrival of three assistant coaches — Neil Caskey, Emilie Hoeper and Jake Tapp — since 2015-16.
"I felt we weren't as good as I felt we should have been, and that's my fault," Hite said. "For us to get back to where I think we need to be, or should be, I've got to make some changes."
In short, Hite thought training attitudes needed to be refined.
"We have great coaches," he said, "but I felt like we were being too 'I'm a distance person.' Or 'I'm a sprinter and I can only be coached by so-and-so.'
"I didn't like that. That doesn't create synergy within the group."
As part of that new process, Hite had his swimmers train more in the middle distances in practice than focusing on sprints or the longer distances.
Hite believes the approach has brought the swimmers and coaches closer because everyone is on the same training page.
For example, Tapp, a former Olympian with Team Canada, "can coach anyone on the team and they'll listen and they'll be open to that," Hite said.
Carlson, who placed third in the 200 breaststroke and sixth in the 100 breaststroke at the Big Ten meet, said the collaborative training approach has helped the overall product.
"It's helped me build a stronger relationship with all the coaches," she said. "It's all kind of brought us together as a team.
"There are times when we break up and do specific stroke training, but we've done a lot more this season together than we have apart and that's sort of brought us all together."
Matt Hutchins, a two-time All-American from Christchurch, New Zealand, said the altered training format "is definitely starting to show in our balance between our sprint relays and our longer relays."
Hutchins, an Olympian from last summer's Games in Rio de Janeiro who placed in the 200, 500 and 1,650 freestyle events at the Big Ten meet last month, said a more competitive atmosphere has been created.
"There's not a lot of sprint-based swimming, so you have those guys that can hang and do those middle-distance practices," he said. "It just creates a lot more competition, a lot more energy in the practices."
Kinney, a member of the 200 and 400 freestyle relays that won Big Ten titles, said the new training philosophy "was a pretty big change for me because (of) three years of doing the same thing."
It required not only effort, but faith as well.
"It was hard because it was different and I didn't know how it was going to play out over the season," Kinney said. "I had to trust Whitney till the very end.
"It's kind of scary because you train so hard for so long and you just hope that in the end it's going to pay off, which it has."
Change doesn't come easily, though.
"There's always going to be people that prefer a certain type of training, different types of training," Hutchins noted.
"We had a pretty healthy conversation with the coaches, got everyone's opinions and worked through that."
Hutchins said "a lot of heads got butted" last summer, but time has brought acceptance.
"It shows what can happen when everyone is on board and everyone trusts the process," he said.
Hite mentioned Kinney, sophomore freestyle specialist Emmy Sehmann, from Bowling Green, Ohio, and Cannon Clifton, a senior from Irving, Texas, who specializes in the freestyle and butterfly, as examples of swimmers who've made great strides in the revised training plan.
"I think everyone across the board has benefitted from it," Hite said.
Time will tell if the changes will pay off.
"So far, so good," Hite said.
"If I look at the team, they're a little more cohesive, got some mojo, which is important."
Check back after the NCAA meets, Hite said.
"That's when we'll know if it worked," he noted.
Hite said the new approach to training reflects his desire to replicate the workmanlike attitude that defines the Badgers in other sports. He mentioned football and men's basketball as programs that "kind of grind it out and that works."
So it goes for UW men's and women's swimming and diving.
"We want to be a hard-working group and we don't want a team that's going to be good in one area," Hite said. "We want to be a team that's good in all swimming events and all the diving events.
"This program has to continue to grow. We've had some good success, but we're not exactly where we want to be, which is winning all the time. If you're not there, you have to continue to look internally.
"My vision is that we're continuing to change and evolve. That's how you get better," Hite said.
