Diary

Tracy
Shessler

Past Entries

January 12, 2004

Wow, so much has happened since my last entry that I hardly know where to begin. We finished off last semester with a couple of meets, Miami Invitational and a dual meet against University of the South, both on the same weekend.

The Miami group tapered and ended up swimming very well. They broke some varsity records and posted numerous national cuts. I, myself, stayed in Atlanta with the rest of the team to swim in the dual meet and many of us added to the number of national cuts posted by our team that weekend. The following week, we started with our exam practices (you only have to make 6 practices out of 16 because of final exams) and then one by one we started to head home for the holidays.

It was great to see my family and to hang out with my high school buddies in Cleveland, but I was excited to get back to Atlanta to celebrate New Year's. Many of my teammates joined me here, but what made the New Year's celebration extra-special was that several Emory swimming alums were here, too! It was so great to see Ellen Gabler, Sammy Lippoff, Shea Loper, Jeff Klug, David Hiller and Daniel Silverfield all together again. Not only was it incredibly fun to bring in the New Year with them, but it provided many interesting stories to tell for the next couple of days.

Because such a large group of the team was down here for New Year's, the coaches were kind enough to run practices for us at Emory before we left on January 2 for winter training in Boca Raton, Florida. Sammy Lippoff accompanied us as the guest alumni coach, which made me very happy.

The training that we do in Florida is the most difficult and physically demanding training of our entire season, and I know that without Sammy being there to encourage me, I probably would have struggled a lot more than I did. Despite the training being incredibly challenging and your body aching every day, our setup in Florida is amazing and without school work to worry about, it gives you ample time to relax and to get to know your teammates better.

You also get tan and whip your body into fantastic shape so everyone pretty much looks really hot right now. I absolutely love Florida training!

Just to give you an idea of what we do down there, we arrive in Boca and stay in these really nice villas right on the beach. Each villa is essentially a little house with a couple of bedrooms and bathrooms, a full kitchen, and a living room. Depending on which villa you are in, you live with either two or five of your teammates of varying classes.

I loved my villa this year, and Hillary Lane, Sarah Gardiner, Jamie Lawler, Caitlyn Hoey, and Erin Graves were a lot of fun to live with, too. We do all the cooking ourselves, but you are also able to go out for food if you would like.

Basically, every morning we would wake up for practice, head over to Florida Atlantic University swim, come back to the villas, make breakfast, go out to the beach and relax, have lunch, head back to the pool for another practice, and then back to the villas for dinner and relax for the rest of the evening.

Every third day we had an afternoon off (without a practice) and people spent their leisure time in a variety of ways. Patrick Mulligan was nice enough to bring three of his surf boards to training this year for anyone who wanted to catch some waves.

On a few of the days, we were able to surf right at the beach we were staying on, which was very convenient and a lot of fun. Other people went fishing or shopping, and in past years we have been able to go to the Everglades or to the horse track in our free time, among other things.

Training-wise, I had my best Florida trip ever, and I owe much of that to my teammates and coaches who were always very encouraging. This year was particularly poignant for me because I'm a senior and it was nice to swim with and participate in certain "traditions" with my classmates with whom I share so many memories. I will definitely miss Boca next year.

After we finished in Boca Raton, we headed across the state to Tampa for a dual meet with the University of Tampa. When we arrived, we immediately got into the pool to loosen up so we could be in top shape for the competition the next day, but swimming outdoors in 40-degree weather made "loosening up" a bit difficult.

The voice of Andre 3000 kept running through my head…"Now what's cooler than being cool? ICE COLD!" Despite the less-than-ideal weather conditions, our team made the best of it (as usual) and after that practice we enjoyed an Italian dinner together set up for us by Mrs. Silverfield.

Even though her son (Daniel) graduated last year, she still helps out our team and is one of the sweetest women I know. Honestly, last year I was afraid I might never see her again because Daniel was graduating, and it makes me so happy that isn't the case!

Our meet the next day turned out to be better than expected, namely because the weather was warmer and sunny. We also swam very well, especially considering we had just come off of the hardest training of our season.

Many people swam season-best times or were just off season-best times. Tampa provided us with some good head-to-head competition. It all came down to the last relay, in which we just got out-touched, but our girls definitely put up a fight. I am really proud to be a part of this team.

Now that we are back in Atlanta, we have one more difficult training cycle to get through and classes start on Wednesday. I can smell taper right around the corner, though, and I can hardly wait to start dropping yards! We only have a few more dual meets before our conference championships and I'm expecting some fast times to be posted, so stay tuned!

Tracy Shessler is a senior from North Andover, Mass. She would love to answer e-mail questions from Emory recruits and fans.