2013 Southern Zone Diversity Swim Camp and Summit

 2013 Southern Zone Diversity Swim Camp and Summit

The 1^st Diversity Select Camp and Summit was held in Meckenburg, NC at the Meckenburg County Aquatic Center over the weekend of July 11-14. Athletes ages 13-16 years old (male and female) from 6 LSCs with chaperone/coach/diversity chair attended the camp. We had athletes from New Orleans, Louisiana, Southern Texas, and Central Texas, Miami, Florida, Columbia, SC, and Charlotte, NC

Athletes arrived and checked into the hotel Thursday between 12:00 PM-4:00PM. Suzanne Dangelmaier , SZ coordinator welcomed the camp participants and introduced the summit staff.  The camp staff included Suzanne Dangelmaier, Shaun Anderson, USA Swimming Diversity Director, Dave Thomas USA Swimming Sport Development Director Southern Zone, Rodney Seller, Aquatic Director, Meckenburg Aquatic Center, Janelle Atkinson assistant women coach University of Connecticut and Miriam Lynch, Potomac Valley swim coach. Vinez Lyde from Columbia Swimming and Richard Knight II of the Greenview Swim Team were the athletes selected to represent South Carolina Swimming.   

On Thursday evening, campers swam an evening work out from 6:00-7:30 PM under the direction of Coach Janelle Atkinson.  Swimmers trained middle distance for a total of 4,500 yards, while allowing the opportunity for the coaches to assess potential training groups and skills sets of the attending athletes. Campers had dinner and lights out at 9:30 PM.

Friday morning breakfast was served at 7:00 AM followed by a 7:30 – 9:30 AM 5,400 short course yard work out. The swimmers were placed in appropriate training groups based upon Thursday night’s session, with the main set an aerobic pace set comprised of 1,000 yard swims for the advanced groups down to 500 yards for the least experienced swimmers.  Friday morning after swim practice classroom session one for the athletes with Coach Janelle Atkinson relating her swimming career, beginning with age group swimming, her years as a national caliber athlete at the Bolles School in Florida and culminating as an Olympic medalist representing Jamaica and as a NCAA Division I All- American at the University of Florida.   After lunch, a 1 ½ classroom session was conducted by David Thomas entitled USA Swimming “Resources.”

            Swimmers returned to the pool for a 5:30 training session of 5,000 yards of IM Development.  After dinner, Dave Thomas conducted the third class room talk, this discussing progressing through the ranks of USA Swimming.                                                                 

The athletes returned to the pool on Saturday morning at 9:00 AM for their only long course training session of the weekend, which featured a hypoxic freestyle set of swims varying from 50 to 400 meters long.  Later that afternoon coaches and Diversity Chairs met to discuss both strategies to promote the inclusion of underrepresented populations into the sport and to develop and market the 2015 Southern Zone Diversity Camp, while the camp director met with the athletes to discuss the logistics of checking out of the camp the following morning.  Saturday’s activities concluded with a trip to the National Whitewater Park and a pizza party back at the hotel.