TOWSON, Md. - The new swimming and diving season is just underway and Coach Pat Mead hasn't yet selected a captain.
That fact alone isn't enough to keep Mead from sleeping soundly at night. Indeed, the veteran Towson coach thinks this year's particular mix of youth and experience might be the kind where the right leaders may not emerge until the very end of the season.
That would be just fine with Mead.
“Sometimes, with kids that are this age, when you give two or three people the title of captain, then the rest of the team then sometimes thinks they just need to follow what these people say,” said Mead. “I don't want that.”
With a combined 26 freshmen on the men's and women's rosters, Mead said he realizes that the mantle of leadership this year may come from those who most recently arrived on campus.
Indeed, the people who exhibit the biggest drive to excel in the classroom, or to do the most reps in the weight room or swim the pool in the fastest times, the ones who emerge as natural leaders just might be the youngest team members, Mead said.
“We've got freshmen who are already that way just by the nature of who they are,” said Mead. “I don't want to squash that by saying this sophomore, this junior, this senior is going to be the captain, so you need to be quiet and just listen to what they have to say.”
The fact that freshmen can be leaders isn't such a far-fetched idea, Mead said, if you consider the swimming calendar. The best high school swimmers essentially are in the pool year-round, whether it be for their scholastic team or for a swim club.
They start their seasons in September and go straight through to March or April, taking a week or so off, then going right back to work until early August with another slight break before it's time to go back at it the following September.
With that kind of work ethic, it's no wonder that incoming freshmen come to college campuses already prepared to hit the water hard.
“Sometimes, the freshmen coming in are the ones that have the full year-round background coming in,” said Mead. “Then, they get here and our training is such that they can see huge timing improvement.”
That's not to say that seniors like Jim Buck, Zac Jelinek and Cory Ornstein on the men's team and Cari Czarnecki and Maggie Macedonia on the women's roster, won't play important roles this season.
But, they are sure to be pushed by freshmen like Jon Burr, John Gartland and Victoria Oslund who have emerged as prime contenders to be bright parts of the Tigers' future.
Oslund, for instance, won a pair of events - the 100-yard and 200-yard butterfly - in Towson's season opening win over William and Mary two weeks ago and could become the first Tiger freshman ever to advance to the NCAA Championship Meet.
The two teams return to the pool this Saturday for a dual meet at Georgetown.
