West strength comes from getting stronger

IOWA CITY - Iowa City West Coach Rob Miecznikowski joked that after 12 years leading the Women of Troy swim program that his athletes finally listened.His message was to hit the weight room in the offseason and get stronger.“I finally got them to understand stronger is faster. That's it. That's all there is to it,” said Miecznikowski, noting that they've always had offseason weightlifting but the participation greew to 25 to 30 swimmers attending regularly. “You look at any sport. I don't care if it's track, football, bowling, the stronger you are the better you're going to be at the sport.“The idea you can just swim and get faster all the time is just not true.”The results speak for themselves. The Women of Troy currently sit third in the team rankings with 1,415 points based on their best top performance. It is one of the highest of the program, which has been a consistent top-10 team under Miecznikowski. They are only four shy of power West Des Moines Valley for second place, trailing Ames, who leads the state's best with 1,636.“We're doing well,” Miecznikowski said. “We have a squad of 55 girls this year. We had about 15 freshmen come in this year and a lot of them are pretty highly ranked already.”The team's traditional strength in distance events remains, boasting two of the top three fastest times in the state and five in the top 19. Freshman Lilian Zhu has the second-best 500 free time clocking in at 5 minutes, 21.22 seconds, edging teammate Sarah Weihe at 5:21.50. Another West freshman, Sophie Shoultz, is seventh overall with a time of 5:26.19, and Maria Gannon (5:32.13) and Kathleen Bowman (5:35.99) are 15th and 19th, respectively.Zhu has proven to be a versatile newcomer to the lineup, posting top-eight times in five different events. She is fifth in the 100 back (1:00.87) and 200 individual medley (2:16.52), seventh in the 100 free (56.22) and eighth in the 200 free (2:01.59).“She's very talented,” Miecznikowski said of Zhu. “She works very hard.”West is fairly balanced, holding strong times in various events. Weihe, a senior, is fourth in the 200 free (2:00.40), Bowman ranks 10th in the 100 fly (1:03.77) and sophomore Savannah Butler is fifth in the 100 breaststroke with a time of 1:09.25.Bowman's 100 fly time came as a bit of a surprise, racing to the time in her first competitive attempt.“She popped off a 1:03 the first time out,” Miecznikowski said. “She's like ‘I think I can do the fly.” I said, ‘You know what? I think you're right.' ”Butler has also made an impact, providing a boost with personal bests right out of the gate.“She came back strong,” Miecznikowski said. “She's already faster than she was last year.”It's an example of West's balance and depth. Miecznikowski has plenty of options, despite a logjam in the distance events, which will cause a dilemma of who competes in which event when the championship season arrives. This team is flexible with those distance swimmers being able to can swim the 200 IM, 100 back and 100 fly.“This is really the first year in the 12 years I've been coaching here that we have every event covered,” Miecznikowski said. “It's nice to go into meets and know we're not giving an event away.”Relays have performed well also. West has top-10 times in all three relays, including the state's sixth-fastest time in the 400 free relay (3:49.45) set in the team's best meet this at Muscatine on Sept. 9. West set at least eight top times during that competition.