Higgins, Brooks display old school

Rob Rooney admits he wasn't the greatest swimmer in the world when he attended St. Charles High School in the 1980s.

And there were times early in his career when his approach to training wasn't exactly the best.

But a transformation took place through his high school years -- and by the time he graduated, Rooney had to mentality of a warrior -- the attitude that makes average swimmers good, good swimmers better and great swimmers champions. This is the attitude that has helped just about every swimmer manifest his or her best results by the end of a grueling season.

Now the coach at St. Charles North, when asked for two representatives of the old school warrior spirit, the opening pair of names rolled quickly from his mouth: John Higgins and Jimmy Brooks.

The pair of swimmers, both seniors, admit they carry this no-nonsense approach to the sport, though they really never had much choice.

"It's the only thing I've known," Brooks said. "It's what Rooney has preached to us from Day 1."

With early morning and afternoon practices throughout the season, coupled with all-year club swimming, the sport often becomes more than just something done when not in class.

"It takes up a lot of your life," Higgins said. "Your whole life revolves around swimming."

Midseason practices take on the appearance of aquatic death marches, with swimmers doggedly logging length after length in silent exertion. The other characteristic of these highly-intense workouts is the relative quiet that exists in the pool. There is some conversation, but very little outright excitement.

"You have to have the right mindset," Higgins said. "If you're full of emotion, you won't do as well. You want to have the drive to have what you're doing in the pool."

And just what is that mindset?

"If you put the work in, it'll be worth it at the end," Brooks said. "Whether or not you do well at the end of the season, if you put the work in, you know you'll be a better person for it."

Both Higgins and Brooks have a tough-nosed approach to the hard training sets Rooney gives them. That doesn't mean they're ecstatic when given a seemingly impossible workout routine. But they also don't bellyache about it either.

"You kind of dread it," Higgins said. "But then you suck it up and do it. You know that, in order to get as far as you want to get, you have to tighten the belt and go for it."

Brooks takes a slightly different approach, but it is still an attitudinal move toward embracing the hard work instead of rebelling against it.

"I try to get pumped up for the sets when he tells us to do them," Brooks said. "It's easier to approach a set when you're excited about it. People have told me in the past that you have to try to get excited about it, rather than just go through the motions. You have to get up and go for your teammates."

As head of the program, Rooney helps set the tone, and the approach he uses is old school, just like Higgins and Brooks are used to.

"He still does the old big taper and a lot of yards," Higgins said. "He believes in wearing the drags (suits) until the end, shaving your head -- doing the whole cycle. That's very important. It's a little of the tradition that he brought over from East."

The conference meets are 10 days away, and that starts Championship Season, culminating in the Feb. 22-23 state meet at Evanston. The North Stars expect success and are faster at this point in many races than they were a year ago at the end of the season.

But however they finish, there's one thing for certain: they'll do things in the old fashioned way. Higgins and Brooks wouldn't want it any other way.