Girls swimming: Surging ahead into a promising fall season

Well, it's here - again.

Not the high school girls swimming season. That already started, and hopefully there's enough information nearby to at least set the table for it.

No, I'm referring to the Olympic Surge.

It's common knowledge in the aquatics world that every four years, the prominence of swimming and diving in coverage of the Summer Games has a sharp effect on the total number of athletes who decide to give those sports a try. It's true at our high schools, and the same general trend is found at the age group level.

I think the Surge is great. That iconic 1970s poster of Mark Spitz, with the seven golds draped around his neck? It hung on the wall in the bedroom my brother and I shared growing up. We were already hooked by that point, but it still had a kind of galvanizing effect.

This year's Surge figures to be especially sharp among girls, thanks to the wonderful Rio performances of Katie Ledecky, Lilly King, Maya Dirado and Simone Manuel, among others - along with their endearing behavior while in the spotlight.

Since this is a family publication and we strive to keep the tone positive when addressing high school sports, I will reserve comment on the U.S. men's team exploits.

Anyway, the evidence of a spike in girls participation was clear as I was reaching out to the high school coaches. Both Buffalo Grove and Hersey, for instance, reported teams with around 60 competitors. Prospect, too, has great numbers, the kind Fremd and Barrington routinely draw.

While that's undeniably great for the sport, I guess I'm here to preach a little patience, too.

Nobody jumps in the water and quickly finds out they're destined for the Olympics. In all but the very rarest of cases, it takes many years of training to get anywhere near that kind of pinnacle.

Further, everyone develops at a different rate. So teasing out any conclusions about the specific effect of the Surge is quite elusive.

But this much is certain: More swimmers translates to a greater chance that one of them will reach that highest level. So on that basis alone, it's a good thing for swimming and diving.

The even better and probably more important backdrop to all this is the far greater pool availability in the Mid-Suburban League these days.

Prospect's new natatorium, which is home to both Hersey and Prospect, is a gem. Taken alongside Buffalo Grove's almost-new pool and the various District 211 overhauls, opportunities have never been better for aquatics in the MSL. While Palatine and Schaumburg are still in the midst of their renovations, they're the last of the five dramatic projects in the district, and both of them will be done by the end of the school year.

In other words, there will actually be places for all these new swimmers to swim.

Let's hope all of this leads to an especially strong Surge this year ... and perhaps down the road, too.

• At the moment, this year's ideal swimmer in the Mid-Suburban League would somehow combine the grit of Maggie Emary (Barrington), the tenacity of Olivia Kusio (Hersey), the grace and power of Rebecca Ballo (Fremd) and the versatility of Bridget O'Leary and Emma Graves (Barrington). We will be happy to include others in this uber competitor, pending further results.

• Welcome to the Mid-Suburban League, Tim O'Grady. And welcome back, Rob Lindgren. O'Grady is in charge at Schaumburg this year, following the retirement of Tim Kasper. Lindgren, a familiar face in Dist. 214 as the aquatics coordinator, is coaching Wheeling as Lisa Poynor opted to spend time with her growing family. Meanwhile, at St. Viator, a warm welcome for first-year high school coach Dillon Thompson, eager for his Lions to take advantage of the pool improvements there.

• It's true - Barrington coach Jim Bart is making this season his last as a high school coach. More on that later this fall, but until then here's hoping for a great farewell season from a group that sure looks capable of delivering one for him.

• And finally: Swimming is unique in that it often becomes a lifelong sport for those who participated when they were young.

Take, for example, a person who is routinely exposed to high school swimming as a newspaper reporter and eventually notices that he misses participating in it very much. So he gives it a try again after a long lapse and finds that it's even more fun than he remembers.

He quickly learns that it is a relief to be less concerned with outcomes and times, and that this relief is even sharper when he tries open-water swims - races of 5 kilometers or so, held in lakes. In this setting, he finds the notion of defeating an opponent becomes largely irrelevant, as the main challenges are navigating the course and the ever-present battle within.

But our open-water swimmer eventually discovers that while everything in the preceding paragraph is true, it is still lots of fun to be fast. So he tries to be that, too.

He takes inspiration from the hard-working coaches and young athletes he sees regularly, and he learns from them. With their help, he develops a training regimen - a higher emphasis on race-pace workout sets, a lesser emphasis on total yardage than was fashionable in his earlier years, and a sustained focus on technique.

At times he feels like a mad scientist using his own body as the experiment. When he turns 50, the mail comes and he laughs at his self-described training plan: AARP meets USRPT.

He has a big race coming up in just over a week, so you'll forgive him if he seems a little forgetful lately.

This person would want to be sure to take a moment and thank the many who helped him rediscover and then indulge his love of swimming.

A lifetime sport? Absolutely.

I mean, hypothetically.

agabriel@dailyherald.com