Zach Winn
Equinox Staff
The Keene State College Women’s Swim team won the Little East Conference meet in convincing fashion this year.
Placing first in 13 of the 16 events and earning an LEC-record 630 points on Dec. 1, the team left no room for debate: KSC is the team to beat in the conference.
“I think it gives us confidence in our swimming more than anything else,” freshman Olivia Gallugi said. “It just makes us want to work harder to improve our times.”
[singlepic id=1655 w=320 h=240 float=right]
Making the win even more impressive is the fact the coach decided to put his best six swimmers in another event at MIT. The team has now won seven consecutive LEC titles and is the established team to beat among their division. But they are also young, with nearly half of their team being freshmen, and there was some uncertainty going into the race.
“As freshmen we were all very unsure and we didn’t know what to expect,” freshman Amber Long, who set a 400 individual medley record, said. “We all went into it with really positive attitudes.”
Head Coach Jack Fabian warned of the challenges athletes can face in their first year, citing sleep schedules and food nutrition as subjects his team tries to educate themselves on. But Fabian also sees the benefits of having so many promising freshmen.
“One thing about us is we have a lot of depth this year,” Fabian said.
“Just from the standpoint of having a lot of girls who would be the best girls on other teams in our conference, so it makes us deeper than we have been in the past, which is a great place to be just because it gives us more options at dual meets and it gives us a really good training environment,” Fabian said.
The girls don’t take all the credit though.
“Our coach is one of the best coaches in the region,” Gallugi said. “I feel like everyone on the team has already improved a lot from when they first started, that was a big part of the win.”
The win meant a lot to the team, who also described the victory as a “relief.” It also means another year of tradition. Every time the girls are leaving the locker room for a meet, the coach has them hit a kick board mounted on the wall besides the door. The kick board prominently reads “Keene State LEC Champs” and reminds the team of the standard of excellence they’ve set. Another win means another year of the kick board.
But perhaps even more impressive than the win is the team’s determination. Swimming isn’t like other sports where an LEC championship guarantees a playoff berth, and if these girls want to swim in NCAAs, they’re going to need to keep their foot on the pedal as the season continues. No one seems to understand that more than the team.
“Now we have winter training coming up, which will be a challenge,” freshman Alison Bartlett said. “But it’s also the peak of our season so hopefully we can just get better and better.”
The winter training is a crucial part of the season. Coach Fabian knows it can make or break the girls’ year.
“The next phase is a really challenging phase,” Fabian explained. “We have a couple weeks off but the kids have to be really motivated when they go home to train, you know they’re not like other people who, when they go home, can just kick back and relax for four or five weeks, but they have only a couple days then they have to be working because they can undo all the work that we did this fall.”
So while most of us use winter break as an excuse to catch up on sleep lost during finals, the swim team will be working harder than ever.
But the fact that the team still has work to do doesn’t mean they can’t appreciate their LEC championship.
“We’re really proud of it, we know it’s important to the school,” Fabian said.
Zach Winn can be contacted at
zwinn@keene-equinox.com