August 2, 2001

Alexa Merz, 14

Palisades Malibu YMCA, CA

Today I was contemplating the physical condition of certain coaches who have teams here in Maryland. It is shocking! Almost all of them have a beer belly of some sort, and some even more. How can a swimmer expect to be athletically motivated by a six foot tall, 250 pound man? Yesterday, my four person team took a walking tour of Washington DC, which is about 30 minutes drive, and my coach was dying by the end of the first mile. It was around a five mile walk, so you can imagine how loud our coach was by the end of it. Luckily, we took a metro back to Union Station in order to shut the coach up, and be on time to a restaurant designated by two visiting parents of a girl on my team. I don’t know how much our coach benefited from our little walk yesterday, but I believe a little exercise would not be a damaging experience for most of the coaches here…

Hint: Maybe they should swim their own workouts!