The River Falls Wildcats girls’ swimming and diving team took fourth in their last regular season meet of the year, held at Eau Claire North High School on Saturday.

With sectionals on deck for next weekend, the Wildcats were at their peak as four swimmers medaled, and every member of the team dropped time in at least one race. Head Coach Caitlin Brudzinski said that even though they would’ve liked to beat Chippewa Falls, this meet was a victory.

“I knew with our divers being able to be scored, it was going to be close. Our dual meet against Chip we only lost by like six points. So, this is about what I expected,” Brudzinski said. “A lot of athletes did well. Elise Gulick came in seeded third in the 50-yard freestyle and second in the 100-yard butterfly, and she won both of those races. Mickey Baar had some good swims today. She was seeded seventh in the 200-yard freestyle and ended up taking sixth, seeded fifth in the 500-yard freestyle and ended up in third.”

A big part of this success is linked to the practice of swimmers doing something called tapering before big competitions, which is what the Wildcats have been working on lately.

“In preparation for sectionals, we start up something called tapering where gradually throughout the course of this past week and through this next week, we're going to increase intensity, but we're going to drop distance and increase rest,” Brudzinski said.

While that might sound confusing, it basically means that they’re doing high intensity, interval training where, instead of doing the full distance of their race that they would normally pace themselves for, they will swim as fast as they can for half the distance, take a brief rest, and then swim the other half as fast as they can.

“It's not an exact science ever, but the goal is to get them ready to swim for next Saturday,” Brudzinski said. “Like I told the girls before we started today, ‘Everybody reacts to it differently. The fact that we're halfway through tapering means some of you might have amazing times today, some of you might not, and that's just kind of how your body reacts.’ Apparently, we had a lot of bodies reacting very well to being halfway.”

The practice of tapering has multiple parts to it, with different swimmers doing different distances as per their specific race.

“Next week, my sprinters are going to do a lot of what we call broken 50s, or broken swims, where they are sprinting the entire time they're swimming, but it’s broken up. First, they're going to sprint to 25 yards, they're going to get a 10-15 second rest, and then they’re going to sprint another 25,” Brudzinski said. “Or they're going to do a timed swim off the block, meaning they're going to do a timed 100 where they're around a minute at 100 yards, rest two minutes, and then do another 100.”

Unless you have some experience in this realm, you might not know that the length of a competition sized pool is 25 yards. So, when they’re sprinting 100 yards, that’s essentially going as fast as they possibly can for two laps, taking a two-minute break, and then doing it again.

Another part of this is that they will start out by upping the distance, then cutting, or tapering, it back.

“We do an eight-day taper, but in order to taper, we need to be up in yards already. For example, our distance swimmers started out at 5,400 yards on Tuesday on our first day of taper, whereas we’ve been pretty steady at about 4-5,000 all season. By next Thursday, they're going to be at 3,200 yards, which is about the lowest they've been all season,” Brudzinski said. “Thursday is going to be a nice long stretch and warm up, then it's going to be focused on distance swimmers keeping a strong steady pace, while again giving them that little extra rest and that keeps them feeling good. For sprinters it’s going to be working on tempo and intensity.”

Although it’s difficult for swimmers to do this when they are used to competing at certain distances all year, the results don’t lie. Even though Gulick has consistently done well all season, Saturday was her first time taking first place in a Big River Conference meet, and she did it twice.

“I’ve never taken first in a conference meet, but I think all but one or two times I've taken first in dual meets,” Gulick said. “Tapering is kind of rough sometimes because it's a lot more yards, but then, like next week, the distance comes down to prepare for the big meet at sectionals. So, we'll stay late at practice, or we'll leave a little early, just depending on how fast we get through the set. It's more individual, which is kind of nice.”

Senior Baar is in her fourth year on the varsity roster, and she is very familiar with tapering.

“Tapering has been going pretty well for me. This week was a bit harder than usual, but I think as we start to get towards sections, they'll go a lot better. It definitely starts off like really difficult, and then just kind of gets easier from there,” Baar said. “There’s a chance I could get to state, but I’m not quite sure. I’d have to drop some time, but that’s easier in the 500. I guess it’ll all depend on how I’m feeling next Saturday.”

Tapering is a process that really only prepares teams for a single, most important meet. Last year, they knew one of their swimmers was going to make it, so they waited and tapered her for state. This year, in a closer competition, they want to give swimmers like Gulick and Baar their best shot at sectionals.

Retapering is something you can do, but Brudzinski says it isn’t as effective the second time, especially with the short turnaround between sectionals and state.

“If Elise were to make it a state, and her times today give her a better chance than she had before, we would attempt to retaper her for that, but it just doesn’t go as well. It's usually a one cycle practice,” Brudzinski said. “Sometimes teams do like a mini taper for another big meet in their season, we just don't usually get good results from that. The goal for our athletes, at least because we don't know that they're going to make state for sure, is to swim their best next Saturday with the hopes of qualifying. If we qualify, then we’ll figure it out from there.”

The postseason begins for the swim team this Saturday in Wisconsin Rapids. Good luck to all the River Falls swimmers in their pursuit of making it to state.