Have you heard of us? We are North Suburban YMCA Masters Swim Team, (NSUBY), located on Lexington St. in Woburn, MA. We hail from beautiful suburbs such as Arlington, Billerica, Burlington, Melrose, Wakefield and Winchester and we occasionally find our way to our beloved, (sometimes overheated or poorly filtered) 5-lane pool early in the morning.
One of our well-known swimmers, Gayle Wettach, has been involved with NSUBY long enough to be an authority on the history of the team.
“I have been swimming with the North Suburban Y Masters group for at least 18 years. I saw Dick Donovan there, whom I knew from my work with the NE Masters group (I was VP in charge of meets back then). Between Dick and Marian Nihan, they convinced me to join their group at 5:30 am! In the early days, my husband Rob was swimming also. We would trade off days because we had young children at home. On Sunday mornings we would split the time and our children could be seen hanging out on the pool deck a lot waiting for one of us to get out of the shower! They started this in their infant seats!
Our coach at the time I started was Rich Palumbo. He had us entering Y meets and they were a lot of fun. We hosted at least one at the Woburn Y, too.
I have always been very appreciative of our coaches giving up their swim time to be on the deck. Their workouts are different and I think that is a good thing. I have always liked Marian’s Fridays, because that is when she gives more of a sprinters workout! John’s Sunday morning 1.5-2 hour sessions are killers and Beth just never lets you stop.
I am actually surprised that the Y has let us keep our scheduled time for all of these years. My guess is that the team keeps all of us coming back as Y members and the Y doesn’t pay our coaches, we pay them on deck. I think we are very lucky to have this arrangement. It works well for us and for our coaches.”
Martine Goldberg has been swimming with our group for the last 4 years. She calls the sport “interesting and challenging” and says she has seen tremendous personal improvement since she had never before had formal coaching. She has fun socializing in the locker room and keeping (or trying to keep) in shape. “I enjoy the camaraderie the most. Encouraging one another during work outs, getting more technical coaching and feeling very comfortable with all the coaching staff keeps me coming back.”
In the past few years only a few social gatherings outside the pool have gotten off the ground, though I hear they used to be more numerous. Thanks to Brooke for getting us together for wine tasting and entry-form-coercion prior to the Harvard meet the past few years. Gayle remembers fondly social events instigated by Dave and Karen Houghton and Marian Nihan. Martine has voiced our common desire to get together more often in the future.
My impression is that, as a group, we are swimming pretty well and fighting the ravages of time with noble efforts. Personally, I’m swimming almost as fast as I did when I was 12, just with considerably more pain, and I have John Palmer’s and Marian Nihan’s work-outs to thank for that. I am a relative newcomer to the group. I have had a meager attendance record for 2 years or so and have participated in the 2005 and 2006 SCY meets at Harvard with a subset of our workout group. It’s such a supportive, fun bunch of people. I love the practices and the meets and I especially like participating in the relays. Given our small group, our relays may have age ranges from 20’s to 50’s and one person may have to swim their worst stroke! (Dave Damassa, I. O. U. a 100 fly leg next year).
What are our typical workouts like? John Palmer once downloaded a workout from the internet for us. Apparently, he didn’t actually read it before posting it on the deck. We were supposed to swim with intervals of “LB +10”. After much debate, procrastination and extended rest, we decided that LB must mean “lifetime best”. “Lifetime best plus 10 seconds? That was 30 years ago!” There was a general uproar, and finally John tore himself from his newspaper long enough to say “OK, OK, calm down. Your interval is your lifetime best AT AGE 9 plus 10 seconds.” We were then able to settle a bit and got down to some semi-serious work. Of course those of us who came to swimming later in life had a really easy set.
These days, we tend to enter just one meet per year as a group. Our most recent accomplishment was placing 10th at the 2006 SCY Championships. Gayle Wettach recalls that our small group has been able to place in the top 10 most years since the meet’s inception. While 10th may not sound impressive to many reading this profile, we actually are reasonably satisfied with our showing. I calculated approximate points per swimmer totals for the top 5 teams and compared them with NSUBY. With 14 registered swimmers and 12 actually showing up, we amassed 881 points, or approximately 73 points per swimmer. Not bad when you compare this figure to the top 5 teams, we are right in there! Cambridge, Andover, Swim RI, Minuteman and ABC all amassed 56 to 106 points per swimmer entered. So, I’d like to emphasize New England’s 10th place team may be better than you think! I prefer to think of us as cozy, casual and a little under-populated. It may be accurate to say that we New England Masters Swimmers are all equally slow or that we are aging gracelessly together, regardless of the size of the club.
Coach John Palmer’s answers to Nate McBride’s questionnaire fairly captures the culture of our team.
Q: Can you speak about the history of NSUBY? How did it start and where are you now?
A: The Legend: Long ago when the earth was young (or at least we were), before cell phones, when the singing wire was still used and before the YMCA charged Los Angeles health club prices to be a member, there came a man with a vision to bring pain and sleep deprivation to the masses. He seduced a small group of gullible runners and former competitive swimmers, convincing them it would be a good idea to partake in early mourning group flagellation. This man later would become a legend in New England Masters swimming. His name is Richard Donovan (a.k.a. Dr. Evil). To this day legions (app. 30 members on the roster at any given time during the year) of glassy eyed zombies hurl themselves (no diving in the shallow end) head long into the chlorinated abyss of the North Suburban YMCA pool in Woburn.
Q: What is the coaching philosophy and focus?
A: I can only speak for myself but my coaching philosophy is to give the team workouts so painful I would not dream of doing them myself.
Q: What kinds of workouts do you guys do?
A: The length and intervals are determined by the size of the sports section I have to read.
Q: Many teams have some sort of Mission Statement or defining statement about why they are here. What is the philosophy of NSUBY?
A: Why are we here? Ask Dick. Philosophy: The key to success is lowered expectations.
Q: What are some of the greatest successes of NSUBY? (Championship meets, individual performances, etc)
A: (John’s real answer to this question may not be suitable for this publication, but the gist is that we should rejoice that very little marital strife has resulted from our shared time, barely-clad, at the Y.)
Q: What do you see in the future for NSUBY?
A: We hope it’s a new filter system. Our team mascot is a hairball in lane 3.
Q: All Masters swim programs, at one time or another, face difficulties in the ever evolving world of swimming. Some teams lose pool time, others simply just can't afford to run a program. What difficulties have you faced and what happened as a result?
A: Infant swim classes resulting in pool closing do to fecal contamination. The result is that we go to Dunkin Donuts.
Q: Can you share with our readers the details of your coaches and workout information?
A: Coaches: Many of us have to take turns on deck because our doctors are telling us that we actually need to get in the pool in order to reap the health benefits of masters’ swimming.
Beth Eggiman: "Who needs rest between sets, the only real stroke is freestyle."
Mariam Nihan: "Those who can't, coach; those who can, swim occasionally on Sundays."
John Palmer: "Do as I say, not as I do."
Beth, Dave Damassa, Liz Scott, Charles Skeele: Why can't these people get their rotation straight?
B: Workouts
Mon, Wed, Fri 5:30 to 6:30 am, $2 per workout
Sun 7:00 to 8:30 am, $3 per workout
You must be a member of the Greater Boston YMCA's in order to attend our workouts.
I only coach about once per month, but I’m writing tomorrow morning’s work out right now. Hmmm, How ‘bout over-distance pyramids?
Warm up: 200 free swim, 200 strokes, 100 kickSet: 4 x (75, 125, 250, 125, 75) OR 4 x (50, 100, 200, 100, 50)
Rest: 20 sec after each swim; 1 min. after each subset.
1=free pull
2=best stroke
3=kick
4=free swim
Cool down: 100 easy
3200 yards or 2600 yards
a picture:
http://www.swimnem.org/cgi-bin/emAlbum.cgi?cmd=show_image&path=Harvard%202006&img=29&tn=1
Submitted by Liz Scott, (40-44, NSUBY)
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