Girls' swimming: Borriello 'the girl to beat'
Valley Central diver sets sights on capturing Section 9 title
Top Photo
By Mira Wassef
Times Herald-Record
August 31, 2008
Nicole Borriello spent a couple of weeks during the summer jumping on a trampoline with a belt hooked up to her waist. The unconventional training method helped the Valley Central diver work on her form so she can get ready for another run at the state championships.
Borriello worked with U.S. Olympic diving coach Dick Kimball at SUNY Purchase to get ready for the upcoming season. Borriello, who has finished third in sections the past two years, placed in the top six at the state tournament last season.
"My goal this year is to finish first in the section and be in the top five at states," Borriello said.
Borriello, who is a former gymnast and began diving after an ankle injury ended her gymnastics career, says her best dive is the reverse, but she's working on a front 21/2 pike. The 17-year-old senior is already getting Division I attention from the University of Delaware, James Madison University and UConn.
"She's the girl to beat," Valley Central coach Scott Warner said.
Borriello could get some competition from Marlboro's Paige Rhodes, who finished 13th at the Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association championships last season. Rhodes trains with Valley Central diving coach Jim Frisbie.
The Buzz
The Section 9 swimming community is buzzing about Michael Phelps' performance at the Olympics. His eight gold medals and slew of world records could be partly attributed to the new Speedo LZR Racer suits and the fast-water design of the Olympic pool, which limits the turbulence.
"I think you'll see a few kids purchase the new suit," Warner said. "It's not cost effective to buy them for a whole team, but it would help the top-level kids. It's not going to help if you're slow."
Pine Bush coach Kathy Gallagher said Phelps' fingertip finish in the 100-meter butterfly has definitely motivated her team to work hard on their finishes.
As far as top-notch facilities, Middletown received a new state-of-the-art pool along with its massive athletic renovation.
Teams to watch
Valley Central is the defending Section 9 champion but lost five of its top point scorers from last season's squad. Valley Central coach Scott Warner said his team will be able to plug some holes and should be contenders again this season. The Vikings are led by junior breaststroker Amy Owens and senior Kaitlin Thorp.
Newburgh Free Academy and Pine Bush are the contenders in the section. Newburgh, which lost seven seniors and finished second in the section last year behind Valley Central, is led by talented eighth-grader Brittany Friese, who swims all the freestyle events and the butterfly.
"It's going to be very competitive this season," said Newburgh coach Pat Kavanagh. "My goal is to do better this season."
Pine Bush lost some top point scorers, but reloaded with a lot of young talent from the Pine Bush Aquatic Club, including eighth-grader Katelyn Bauersachs and freshman Danielle Schnalz.
Players to watch
Amy Owens, Valley Central, junior, breaststroke: Owens should be the top point-scorer for Valley Central.
Emily Henry, Valley Central, junior, butterfly and backstroke: Henry qualified for states as a seventh-grader but hasn't been back since. And she's looking to get back there.
Kaitlin Thorp, Valley Central, senior, butterfly: Thorp is the nucleus and driver of the team.
Andrea Tremper, Valley Central, junior, free sprints: Tremper is the top sprinter on the team.
Hilary Hocson, Newburgh Free Academy, senior, 200 IM, breaststroke, relays: Hocson is the team leader and kicks into another gear in close races.
Brittany Friese, Newburgh Free Academy, eighth-grader, all freestyle events and butterfly: Friese is a talented swimmer whose strokes come naturally and her talent and hard work make her a threat.
Colleen Larkin, Washingtonville, freestyle and relay: Larkin finished eighth in the 500 free at states last year and was 16th in the 200 freestyle.
Brienne Ryan, Cornwall, senior, backstroke, freestyle, relay: Ryan was third in the state last year in the 100-yard backstroke and fourth in the 50-freestyle.
Jackie Daly, Pine Bush, senior, breaststroke, backstroke, freestyle: Daly's versatility allows her to swim anywhere she's needed.
Alexis DiGasso, Pine Bush, junior, diver: DiGasso is up-and-coming and is expected to be competitive this season.
New faces on the sidelines
Leyla Williams is the new coach at Minisink Valley. ... Guy Maisonet was the diving coach last year at Cornwall but takes over as head coach for Nancy Rooney, who retired after 25 years as coach.
Meets to watch
Sept. 8: Valley Central at Washingtonville, 4:30 p.m.
Sept. 10: Pine Bush at Valley Central, 4:30 p.m.
Sept. 18: NFA at Pine Bush, 4:30 p.m.
Sept. 23: Washingtonville at Pine Bush, 4:30 p.m.
Oct. 7: Valley Central at NFA, 4:30 p.m.
With all the Section 9 teams only squaring off against each other once during the regular season, points will be at a premium.
Postseason lookahead
OCIAA Championships at Washingtonville
Oct. 24: Diving at 4:30 p.m.
Oct. 25: Swimming at 10:30 a.m.
Section 9 Championships at Valley Central
Nov. 6: Diving Trials at 4:30 p.m.
Nov. 7: Swimming Trials at 4:30 p.m.
Nov. 8: Swimming and Diving finals, 3:30 p.m.
State tournament at ECCC Pool, Buffalo
Nov. 20: Travel Day
Nov. 21-22: Trials and Finals
Meet my team
Valley central swimmer Amy Owens introduces her team in a video at Varsity845.com
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Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Sunday, August 31, 2008
The Michael Phelps Diet: Don’t Try It at Home
The Michael Phelps Diet: Don’t Try It at Home
Posted by Sarah Rubenstein
Michael Phelps celebrates another gold medal and another 12,000-calorie day.
Swimmer Michael Phelps’s next career may be in competitive eating. Besidesb grabbing five gold medals at the Beijing Olympics so far, making him the winningest Olympic athlete ever, he’s got to be setting new marks on the chow line.
A New York Post account of Phelps’s… wait for it… 12,000-calorie-a-day diet, gave us a stomachache. Could one human being really consume that much and still be in Phelps’s shape? And could this possibly be healthy for Phelps, even considering his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week exercise regimen?
Here’s Phelps’s typical menu. (No, he doesn’t choose among these options. He eats them all, according to the Post.)
Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.
Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.
Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.Does a diet like this make sense even for a calorie-incinerating human swimming machine? We checked in with Mark Klion, a sports medicine doc and orthopedic surgeon at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. He reminded us that the eating game all comes down to basic math.
If you eat fewer calories than you burn exercising, you lose weight. But an athlete like Phelps, who exercises up a storm, has to worry about eating enough to replenish the scads of calories he’s burned. If he doesn’t, Klion explains, his “body won’t recover, the muscles will not recover, there will not be adequate energy stored for him to compete in his next event.”
But what about the choice of foods? All those eggs and ham and cheese can’t possibly be good for him, can they? Says Klion, “I think for him, because of his caloric demands, he can probably eat whatever he wants to.” And besides, Klion says, if you’ve got to eat that much, it better be enjoyable, or you won’t be able to keep up. Phelps might not be so eager to shovel down a pound of tofu in a sitting, Klion points out.
Still, Klion cautions that he knows plenty of athletes who’ve been training for marathons and have gained weight because they thought they could eat whatever they wanted. So it really does take some planning. Some resources on the Web might help, such as this calorie-use chart from the American Heart Association and a calorie calculator from Runner’s World magazine. This calculator from the Calorie Control Council includes a bunch of different activities, from dusting to playing ice hockey.
But these kinds of calculators don’t really apply to a someone like Phelps, who exercises way more vigorously than the typical person, says Kathleen Laquale, an athletic trainer and nutritionist who teaches at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. Even by athletic standards, Phelps is in his own league.Laquale says cyclists in the Tour de France commonly consume a paltry 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day.
Posted by Sarah Rubenstein
Michael Phelps celebrates another gold medal and another 12,000-calorie day.
Swimmer Michael Phelps’s next career may be in competitive eating. Besidesb grabbing five gold medals at the Beijing Olympics so far, making him the winningest Olympic athlete ever, he’s got to be setting new marks on the chow line.
A New York Post account of Phelps’s… wait for it… 12,000-calorie-a-day diet, gave us a stomachache. Could one human being really consume that much and still be in Phelps’s shape? And could this possibly be healthy for Phelps, even considering his five-hours-a-day, six-days-a-week exercise regimen?
Here’s Phelps’s typical menu. (No, he doesn’t choose among these options. He eats them all, according to the Post.)
Breakfast: Three fried-egg sandwiches loaded with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions and mayonnaise. Two cups of coffee. One five-egg omelet. One bowl of grits. Three slices of French toast topped with powdered sugar. Three chocolate-chip pancakes.
Lunch: One pound of enriched pasta. Two large ham and cheese sandwiches with mayo on white bread. Energy drinks packing 1,000 calories.
Dinner: One pound of pasta. An entire pizza. More energy drinks.Does a diet like this make sense even for a calorie-incinerating human swimming machine? We checked in with Mark Klion, a sports medicine doc and orthopedic surgeon at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York. He reminded us that the eating game all comes down to basic math.
If you eat fewer calories than you burn exercising, you lose weight. But an athlete like Phelps, who exercises up a storm, has to worry about eating enough to replenish the scads of calories he’s burned. If he doesn’t, Klion explains, his “body won’t recover, the muscles will not recover, there will not be adequate energy stored for him to compete in his next event.”
But what about the choice of foods? All those eggs and ham and cheese can’t possibly be good for him, can they? Says Klion, “I think for him, because of his caloric demands, he can probably eat whatever he wants to.” And besides, Klion says, if you’ve got to eat that much, it better be enjoyable, or you won’t be able to keep up. Phelps might not be so eager to shovel down a pound of tofu in a sitting, Klion points out.
Still, Klion cautions that he knows plenty of athletes who’ve been training for marathons and have gained weight because they thought they could eat whatever they wanted. So it really does take some planning. Some resources on the Web might help, such as this calorie-use chart from the American Heart Association and a calorie calculator from Runner’s World magazine. This calculator from the Calorie Control Council includes a bunch of different activities, from dusting to playing ice hockey.
But these kinds of calculators don’t really apply to a someone like Phelps, who exercises way more vigorously than the typical person, says Kathleen Laquale, an athletic trainer and nutritionist who teaches at Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts. Even by athletic standards, Phelps is in his own league.Laquale says cyclists in the Tour de France commonly consume a paltry 8,000 to 10,000 calories a day.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Iowan climbs Everest, now attempts to swim Channel
By MICHAEL J. CRUMB | Associated Press Writer
DES MOINES, Iowa - Five years after Charlie Wittmack trudged to the 29,035 foot summit of Mt. Everest, he'll soon attempt a 21-mile-swim across the English Channel.
If he's successful, the 31-year-old trial lawyer from Des Moines will be the first American to achieve both feats. Only three others have done it, an accomplishment known as the peak and the pond.
"It's a challenge that's been floating around in adventure circles for a while now,"
Wittmack said in a telephone interview from England while waiting for seas to calm enough for his attempt.
If the weather cooperates, Wittmack plans to dive into the waters of the English Channel about 10 a.m. Friday at Shakespeare Beach in Dover. He hopes to climb out of the channel on the French coast about 12 hours later.
For Wittmack, it's his latest venture into the world of extreme sports.
On May 22, 2003, he reached the summit of Mt. Everest. He trained seven years for the climb and once there, he found himself in what he said were the worst conditions ever recorded on the mountain.
"I spent three days without food or water and a day without oxygen above 20,000 feet," Wittmack said.
The conditions in the English Channel should be considerably better, but not without risk.
"We expect the water to be up to 67 degrees this week -- at that level hypothermia is still a major concern," said Wittmack.
Wittmack, who swam for Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, began training for the channel swim about three years ago. For the past six months, he's been training four hours a day, most of it swimming. He has been swimming every other weekend in either Lake Michigan or Lake Superior, and he's competed in a 12{-mile race in Key West, Fla.
He said his experience on Everest inspired him to attempt the channel crossing. "I realized after that that my body was predisposed for climbing at higher elevations," he said. "After Everest I wanted to try something that would be as great a challenge and I decided on the English Channel."
Michael Reed, president of the Channel Swimming Association, confirmed Wittmack would be the first American to accomplish both feats. The other swimmers were from Britain, Greece and Mexico.
Wittmack said plenty of people in adventure circles consider the dual challenge, but few have attempted both.
"The reason it's difficult is because of the body's physiology," he said.
Wittmack said climbers, such as himself, tend to be shorter with less body fat and a high weight-to-strength ratio. By comparison, long distance swimmers tend to have higher body fat, which makes them more buoyant, and taller with longer limbs to help propel themselves through the water faster.
Randy Clark, the manager of the exercise science laboratory at the University of Wisconsin Hospital Sports Medicine Center in Madison, Wis., said that while mountain climbers and distance swimmers tend to have different physical characteristics, there is an underlying similarity.
"There is some cross over in physiological and psychological makeup," he said. "Anybody that is able to climb Mt. Everest or do anything that is highly physically demanding over a long period of time, it takes incredible cardiovascular fitness, and I would say the same about swimming the English Channel.
"You can't underestimate the need for incredible cardiovascular fitness to pull off either of those events, let alone both," Clark said."
Wittmack arrived in England nearly two weeks ago and in his first practice swim in the colder water his legs "seized up."
"My thighs seized up after an hour and I wasn't able to use my legs," Wittmack said.
He's been swimming every day since then to get his body acclimated to the water, resulting in a natural warming of his core body temperature, Wittmack said.
"As the body adapts to cold water, if it anticipates it is going in cold water it artificially increases the core body temperature, so for the past week or so I've been running a low grade fever of about 100 degrees," he said.
Organizations that govern the swim require that athletes only wear swimsuits, not wetsuits that could shield them from the cold or the kind of swimwear that Olympic athletes used that helped them break so many world records in Beijing.
Once he begins the swim, Wittmack said his team will closely monitor the weather conditions and the tide. There have been few successful crossings of the channel this August because of high winds.
Strong tides also can complicate crossing attempts, sometimes pushing swimmers 15 miles or more off course.
"It's not uncommon to get stuck in a current and swim for an additional six hours," Wittmack said.
His wife, Catherine, and their 6-month-old son James have joined him on the trip, along with the couple's parents.
Wittmack said his father-in-law is a physician and his own dad is "kind of a sailor." Both will be in the boat that accompanies him on the swim.
"It's going to be a great challenge, and that is what really appeals to me," he said. "These are things where you have to be at your absolute peak of physical conditioning, mentally as strong as you've ever been and have some luck."
If he's successful, the 31-year-old trial lawyer from Des Moines will be the first American to achieve both feats. Only three others have done it, an accomplishment known as the peak and the pond.
"It's a challenge that's been floating around in adventure circles for a while now,"
Wittmack said in a telephone interview from England while waiting for seas to calm enough for his attempt.
If the weather cooperates, Wittmack plans to dive into the waters of the English Channel about 10 a.m. Friday at Shakespeare Beach in Dover. He hopes to climb out of the channel on the French coast about 12 hours later.
For Wittmack, it's his latest venture into the world of extreme sports.
On May 22, 2003, he reached the summit of Mt. Everest. He trained seven years for the climb and once there, he found himself in what he said were the worst conditions ever recorded on the mountain.
"I spent three days without food or water and a day without oxygen above 20,000 feet," Wittmack said.
The conditions in the English Channel should be considerably better, but not without risk.
"We expect the water to be up to 67 degrees this week -- at that level hypothermia is still a major concern," said Wittmack.
Wittmack, who swam for Roosevelt High School in Des Moines, began training for the channel swim about three years ago. For the past six months, he's been training four hours a day, most of it swimming. He has been swimming every other weekend in either Lake Michigan or Lake Superior, and he's competed in a 12{-mile race in Key West, Fla.
He said his experience on Everest inspired him to attempt the channel crossing. "I realized after that that my body was predisposed for climbing at higher elevations," he said. "After Everest I wanted to try something that would be as great a challenge and I decided on the English Channel."
Michael Reed, president of the Channel Swimming Association, confirmed Wittmack would be the first American to accomplish both feats. The other swimmers were from Britain, Greece and Mexico.
Wittmack said plenty of people in adventure circles consider the dual challenge, but few have attempted both.
"The reason it's difficult is because of the body's physiology," he said.
Wittmack said climbers, such as himself, tend to be shorter with less body fat and a high weight-to-strength ratio. By comparison, long distance swimmers tend to have higher body fat, which makes them more buoyant, and taller with longer limbs to help propel themselves through the water faster.
Randy Clark, the manager of the exercise science laboratory at the University of Wisconsin Hospital Sports Medicine Center in Madison, Wis., said that while mountain climbers and distance swimmers tend to have different physical characteristics, there is an underlying similarity.
"There is some cross over in physiological and psychological makeup," he said. "Anybody that is able to climb Mt. Everest or do anything that is highly physically demanding over a long period of time, it takes incredible cardiovascular fitness, and I would say the same about swimming the English Channel.
"You can't underestimate the need for incredible cardiovascular fitness to pull off either of those events, let alone both," Clark said."
Wittmack arrived in England nearly two weeks ago and in his first practice swim in the colder water his legs "seized up."
"My thighs seized up after an hour and I wasn't able to use my legs," Wittmack said.
He's been swimming every day since then to get his body acclimated to the water, resulting in a natural warming of his core body temperature, Wittmack said.
"As the body adapts to cold water, if it anticipates it is going in cold water it artificially increases the core body temperature, so for the past week or so I've been running a low grade fever of about 100 degrees," he said.
Organizations that govern the swim require that athletes only wear swimsuits, not wetsuits that could shield them from the cold or the kind of swimwear that Olympic athletes used that helped them break so many world records in Beijing.
Once he begins the swim, Wittmack said his team will closely monitor the weather conditions and the tide. There have been few successful crossings of the channel this August because of high winds.
Strong tides also can complicate crossing attempts, sometimes pushing swimmers 15 miles or more off course.
"It's not uncommon to get stuck in a current and swim for an additional six hours," Wittmack said.
His wife, Catherine, and their 6-month-old son James have joined him on the trip, along with the couple's parents.
Wittmack said his father-in-law is a physician and his own dad is "kind of a sailor." Both will be in the boat that accompanies him on the swim.
"It's going to be a great challenge, and that is what really appeals to me," he said. "These are things where you have to be at your absolute peak of physical conditioning, mentally as strong as you've ever been and have some luck."
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