Blustery, drab, and frosty. Buffalo is best known for its immense piles of snow on the roads, its heavy snowstorms, and tiny spicy chicken wings. A week in upstate NY is anything but an ideal vacation destination during March, but five Pomona-Pitzer swimmers rejoiced at the prospect of seven days at the mercy of wintry storms. For the week of March 8-10, Buffalo’s Erie Community College natatorium hosted the NCAA Division III swimming and diving championships, a.k.a. Nationals. How did they score this all-expense paid trip to snow city?

Months spent on technique work, stroke counting, oxygen deprivation, and limit pushing. Coach Penny Dean concocts sets designed to hone and test their skills. Trademarks such as a two- mile (40 minute) sprint, the "Think Set" (too complicated to explain here) or the dreaded "Minute Set" (lasts way longer than a minute) are essential preparation for the end of a long season. For most swimmers, SCIAC concludes a successful season. But for the five stoked National qualifiers, it meant another three weeks of pushing through soreness, double the school work, and another taper.

At SCIAC, Pomona student-athletes Kate Bollinger ’01, Jacquie Cole ’02, Lucia Schmit ’02, Sarah Kalhorn ’04, and Lizzie Davis ’04 all recorded times that would propel them to Buffalo. Bollinger qualified in the 400 IM and the 200 Butterfly, the 400 being fast enough to make the meet. Schmit qualified in the 200 IM and was invited to the meet for her joint-effort with Cole, Kalhorn, and Davis. The foursome continued the Sagehen tradition of bringing the 4 x 200 Freestyle Relay to the national forum.

Yet attending Nationals means more than getting to travel really far and staying in a really nice hotel and swimming quickly. The meet itself is exciting, but the time away from the pool can be just as cool. The five swimmers plus coach headed out of Buffalo at the first chance for a tour of Niagara Falls and its shopping complex. The falls were massive and stretched well beyond a wall of near frozen mist. The only humans to survive tumbling over the falls were either severely injured, or had gained enough momentum to catapult over the treacherous turbulence below into calmer safer water. Maybe next time the sprinters will try it.

At Rainbow Falls, safely back on American snow, Schmit made a brilliant snow angel–her first ever, and freshmen Kalhorn and Davis were pelted by fluffy snowballs by Cole and Bollinger. Coach Dean called them all back and it was time to head back to the pool. For another stretch-out swim.

On deck, some teams get very intense and execute loud cheers that incorporate their team psychologists, massage therapists, and a few coaches. P-P got into the action by helping Santa Cruz perform their patented Banana Slug slither around the pool. University of Puget Sound and C-M-S (Suzy Nicoletti CMC ’02) joined in for a potentially traditional West Coast Rah! A follow-up Consortium Rah! with Nicoletti, was considered but voted down because no one would have understood the word or its meaning. Later, during a brief period of technical difficulty, the whole natatorium worked together for a series of crowd waves that continued for quite a few minutes.

The participants interacted apart from their associated teams, too. Trying to coax a too-small full leg Speedo suit over their heels was an experience for everyone in the locker room. Bonding occurred between those who had already tried on the high-tech suits and offered advice, bystanders watching intently to pick up tips before their turn, and the typical disbelief that such a small amount of material could possibly cover so much skin.

Thursday morning the revelry was temporarily pushed aside and the focus began. The five swimmers awoke early for their first warm-up of Nationals. Two hours later they were back at the pool for their second warm-up and the start of the meet. Events on Thursday were the 200 IM, the 200 free relay, and the 400 medley relay. Schmit and Bollinger swam the 200 IM. Schmit’s time of 2:11.42 was a personal best and also an All-American honorable mention time, putting her in sixteenth place overall. The 400 Medley relay, comprised of Kalhorn (backstroke), Schmit (breaststroke), Bollinger (butterfly), and Cole (freestyle) went a total time of 4:09.57. Kalhorn went a personal best in the backstroke of 1:01.57, good enough for the school top ten list.

On Friday P-P swimmers participated in both the 400 Individual Medley and the 800 freestyle-relay. In the IM, Schmidt finished in eighteenth place followed closely by Bollinger in nineteenth. The 800 free relay swum by Kalhorn, Cole, Schmit, and Davis finished with a time of 7:54, with personal best times by Kalhorn, Schmit, and Davis. The four collected their congratulations on Saturday, the final day of the meet. Not long after that Bollinger earned All-American honorable mention in the 200 fly, finishing in sixteenth place. Two vanfuls of parents, athletes and coaches departed the meet early to enjoy a leisurely dinner with Nicoletti and Coach Bruce Brown at Buca di Beppo’s before the Saturday night celebration.

The whole experience was a joy for the swimmers and for Coach Dean. Many friendships from other teams were established and the ties between teammates were strengthened.