Aquanauts hold time trials

After a busy summer of changes, the Fort Frances Aquanauts Swim Team got its first chance to evaluate the progress of its members at time trials last Thursday night.
Fourteen of the club’s competitive swimmers competed against the clock for the first time this season at the Memorial Sports Centre pool.
Afterwards, new Aquanauts’ coach Tristan Hutton said he was pleased with the progress the swimmers have shown, although he warned the team still has a long way to go before it reaches its full potential.
“This is still a work in progress, but I think we’re making a good charge at it right now,” Hutton said.
“This was the first time the kids were tested—time trials are a test—in what I wanted them to do,” he added.
“Some of them were successful and some of them weren’t so successful. [But] that’s to be expected because not everyone improves at the same pace.”
Hutton’s arrival as head coach—he took over from Roman Ramirez, who was let go this summer when the club decided it no longer could afford his salary—meant everyone involved with the team had to adjust to a new set of expectations and standards.
The transition period proved to be a challenge—for both the coaches and swimmers.
“It’s been a bit of an adjustment with the new coaches but as time is going on, we’re starting to steady the ship,” Hutton remarked.
“The biggest adjustment has been the new faces.”
Due to Hutton’s job as a bush pilot, he was unavailable for some of the team’s practices at the start of the season, which meant taking on some additional staff to help out. One of the biggest problems the new coach faced was communicating his very specific vision of how the club should be run to those who were helping out.
“I wanted to be a lot more focused on skills, which meant that I had to teach, or somehow get my message across, to the younger coaches,” he explained.
In addition to some initial communication issues, Hutton also has been faced with all of the challenges associated with being a first-time coach.
In an effort to make the experience a little easier, he got his Level 1 coaching certificate in Winnipeg at the end of September—something Hutton says has helped him tremendously.
“I learned a lot at that seminar,” he noted. “I found out that in order to have a strong and healthy team, you really have to start with the young swimmers.”
Armed with the new knowledge, Hutton returned to the Aquanauts determined to teach proper technique to all the club’s members, but particularly the younger ones.
“We want to spend the time working on drills that are specific to what we want to achieve so that by the time they reach a more senior level, I don’t have to correct things that have been going on for five or six years,” he reasoned.
While it’s been a slow process, Hutton believes his swimmers are beginning to understand why he’s asking them to do drills they might not have done in years past.
As the swimmers gain a better grasp on what the coaching staff is trying to teach them, the next major challenge for Hutton will be learning all of their individual quirks.
“My biggest concern with swimming in Canada has been the single mold approach,” he said. “I really don’t like that because everyone is different, everyone reacts differently, and that’s one of the challenges I’m finding.
“If I want to practice what I preach. That means I have to get to know every swimmer individually and find out how they tick, and adjust things to every individual swimmer.”
Hutton and the Aquanauts have two more weeks of practice to get better acquainted before the club’s first competition of the season Nov. 17-19 in Kenora.