Pressure.
A great amount of it looms with South Coast Conference Championships coming up for both the women’s diving and swimming teams.
Amanda Rabb, for instance, has a lot of that pressure building up as she is preparing for both championship weekends.
It’s up to her to see if she gives in to the stress.
She said, “Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. Sometimes you crack under the pressure and it gets to you, but you just have to try your hardest and mentally just block it out.”
Diving starts the tournament on Friday and swimming begins next Thursday.
The women’s swim team is coming off an invitational at Pasadena, where it finished at 16th place with seven team points.
Despite a holistic effort being necessary to garner up enough points to win meets, Amanda Loya chalked it up to just maintaining focus on yourself and being the best you can be.
Loya said she broke the school record for the 100-yard breaststroke last season, and she intends on doing it again. Her motivation stems from setting those types of goals for herself.
“I’ve been focusing on my training and I kind of just wait until conference,” she said. “There’s more pressure to do well. A lot of pressure to win. When I have a lot of pressure I tend to just block it out, focus on myself and get in the zone.”
Distractions are a problem, too.
Rabb identifies this by saying that swimming is just as much about swimming against yourself as it is swimming against other competitors.
It’s against her own personal time. And also getting to state championships.
She said, “I get that only the top people only get to (the) state (championships). It comes down to the point where you can only beat yourself now.
“Every win and every loss you build up over the season, it helps your character to able to compete at conference.”
As far as handling everything coming her way these next two weeks, even Rabb herself doesn’t know how she’s going to handle it.
She added, “Honestly, I have no idea. I have to dive this weekend; I have conference diving championships this weekend. And the following week I have swim, so it’s going to be difficult.”
