Augustana’s swimming and diving teams plunge into new season

Augustana’s swimming and diving teams will kick off their seasons at the University of Nebraska Omaha on Oct. 28. Although the swim teams’ seasons don’t heat up until January, training is already well underway.

Head coach Andrew Makepeace is excited for his second year of coaching at Augustana, hoping to win another NSIC championship with the women’s team (as NSIC preseason polls predict), improve the men’s team standings in the GLIAC championships and continue to break almost every school record year after year.

To accomplish these goals, Makepeace is first focusing on team culture and community.

“If the culture is not on par with what you want to see, you can’t have the same success,” Makepeace said. “It's not going to be fun. It's not going to be an environment conducive to people wanting to come and basically do a grueling exercise. [Swimming] is not a sport. It is just a grueling activity that is done repetitively.”

Senior Mason Kauffeld, who holds school records for the 50, 100 and 200 breaststroke and 200 individual medley, recalls being shocked when Makepeace told the swimmers that swimming was not a sport in one of their first meetings last year. He was mollified when Makepeace explained that, although they were athletes and their points totaled for the team, swimming was unique in its individuality and single-minded focus.

“It is easy to get lost in your own thoughts,” Kauffeld said. “It is very easy to just be swimming, and then you realize, I am not trying as hard as I should be trying. It's really about making yourself feel exhausted so when you get out, you are cooked – and you can say, ‘At least I put everything into that,’ and really that is all that matters.”

Senior Nesrine Jelliti, two-time first-place 100-yard breaststroke NSIC Conference champion, agreed with Kauffeld on the unique individuality of swimming.

“It is just you in the water,” Jelliti said. “You practice very hard to drop just half a second in a year or sometimes you just don’t drop anything. It is just about trying every day, challenging yourself.”

Despite this individuality in the water, the team is a close-knit group in and outside of meets and practices. 

“I like going to practice and seeing my teammates,” Jelliti said. “It makes my day. It is tough sometimes, but seeing my friends going through the same thing as me makes my day go easier.”

Kauffeld says having such a close-knit team helps everyone.

“We pull everyone up,” Kauffeld said. “Everyone moves up together, and we all succeed.”

Growing team spirit and community is something Makepeace is working toward this year with a variety of team bonding activities, including making a team chant, taking practice off to support Augustana’s soccer team and recently going to a corn maze together.

“The ultimate goal is creating a vibe people want to be around,” Makepeace said. “If you create a toxic environment and just train, you can get success, but people will hate it.”

Makepeace began the season with more land workouts, allowing the team to have more time to chat and get to know each other with their heads outside of the water and bringing divers into the fold who normally have to practice at the Midco Aquatic Center due to the shallow depth of Augustana’s pool.

While creating community within the team makes swimming more fun, Kauffeld says it also increases performance.

“When you go to a meet, there is nothing more energizing than having a team that is all on board, knowing who and what they are cheering for,” Kauffeld said.

As part of Augustana’s inaugural men’s swim team four years ago, Kauffeld is proud of his part in creating the team culture.

“It is really inspirational to see all the guys coming after and what you have set up by choosing to come here, " Kauffeld said. “I want to make sure everyone feels welcome and find what makes them tick. I remember I didn’t have any seniors for motivation, so I want to be there for those guys and show them what it looks like to work hard.”

These relationships also help carry practice into the summer and hold everyone accountable when coaches and practices cannot. This summer, many swimmers paired up to make sure they kept fit.

This year, Makepeace plans to focus on the individual needs of swimmers, already making changes like adding double practices for long-distance swimmers at their request.

“That is the team part of it: knowing how to help each individual but then bringing them as a collective to make sure they understand the team culture is the most important thing because that's going to be their experience,” Makepeace said. “These people are going to have life-long friends now that they have shared experiences of both really challenging daunting things they have to accomplish, competing together and everything in between.”