In light of recent steroid allegations, I will be skipping the rest of the season on account of a weak constitution and severe mental fragility.

I would like to start off by first giving thanks:

Thank you, to everyone who has supported Texas A&M swimming, past present and future. I (and the rest of the team greatly appreciate all of your support, regardless of things that have been said on TexAgs.

Thank you, LOB, for doing such a great job of providing insight, information, and support from both teams on this board in such a classy manner. Both teams appreciate all of the support you have given us over the years.

Thank you Spice, for your support, even if I do disagree with many of your opinions

Thank you, Anonymiss, for slandering the reputation of everyone on the men's team, and for causing the credibility and reputation of the team to take a huge blow.

My reasons for posting on this board have been to correct the misinformed, and defend my team and my coaches to every bit of scrutiny that they have been subject to. That is all. I have not meant to attack anyone, and I sincerely apologize to anyone that has interpreted that from any of my posts. I do appreciate your support.

BigPapa - well said on everything. I would be one of those athletes who uses this board as partial motivation. I definitely like proving people wrong.

Blue, Blastoff, Lever - keep baiting, I'm not biting.

RAWR!

Chill out guys. This thread is obviously beyond the point where anything useful will come out of it, and I was just trying to bring some fun to it.

Not trying to bait anyone into anything. I'm sure everyone else feels the same way at this point.

How about we continue any discussions about the team and their training on a new thread, so that everyone can put the hurt feelings of this one behind them?

Agreed. Just remember, guys, that all of us on this board WANT you guys to win. The only reason we care so much about you guys taking a trip is that we are genuinely concerned about you doing well. I know that for swimmers it's easy to get defensive, because it's not often that a large group of people who you've never met are genuinely interested in your success, but in this case that's exactly what we are.

So just take our rantings and ramblings as support for you guys this season, and BTHO NC's.

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In light of recent steroid allegations, I will be skipping the rest of the season on account of a weak constitution and severe mental fragility.

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I couldn't resist one last LOL at this post. Seems like at least this guy is weathering the storm of intense holiday training well. Hopefully you are able to keep the rest of the guys in good spirits with you.

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Not that the swimmers at this school have ever shown any great care for anybody supporting them.

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With the things some people are saying about them right now, can you honestly blame them? (Personal attacking by ONE poster aside)

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Are we supposed to simply blindly trust the coaching staff just because they are the coaching staff?

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Does Ricky Berens question the things that Eddie Reese asks him to do? Did Cesar Cielo ask Dave Marsh why he didnt take a travel trip for winter training? How about Michael Phelps and Bob Bowman?

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It would seem that you, as well, might be a little closer to the team than you would lead the rest of us to believe.

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wow Lever, you are a bright child arent you? Youve definitely outsmarted me on that one. Have I ever denied any allegations of being close to the team? noooooooo. With the kind of info I have given on this board, everyone who reads my posts should know that I have some sort of reasonably close connection to the team. I'll take that medal you offered, and I in turn will hand it right back to you. Well done, you discovered that I know more about the team than you do.

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The only reason we care so much about you guys taking a trip is that we are genuinely concerned about you doing well

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If anything, all these swimmers defending themselves on this board (other than Lever) should show you that they DO NOT CARE that they didnt take a trip, which makes all of your claims invalid. If the men on the team dont have a problem staying at home, then why should the large group of people who theyve never met care?

Thumbs down to BigPapa returning the hostility to this thread. Let it go man. Everyone else has settled their issues. By declaring yourself close to the team, make sure you pay attention to how you're representing them.

I don't think they'd be happy to know that you're giving the impression that they want me to return the tickets that I have for the NC's because they'd just rather I not come.

The athletes SHOULDN'T question their coaches. Doesn't mean that we, the fans, can't.
As is evidenced by the softball and womens' basketball boards, the more success a team has is directly correlated to the amount of texags discussion over them. This is probably the longest texags thread about mens' swimming ever. Take that as a compliment.
Given that the guys have no meets for a 2 month stretch, any enthusiasm over the team will be lost if you guys expect us to only discuss "today the boys had 2 a days, and lifted weights. Good practice coach."

To those of you guys who are on the team, if this guy is a teammate, you oughta tell him to knock it off, because he's the only one who really makes me question if you guys want me to root for and support you. If you agree with what he says, then just say so, and I'll buzz off instead.

Blue - I think BigPapa is representing the team WAY better than LeverFulcrum, but I dont see you getting on him? I'm certainly not trying to return hostility, or run you off as a fan, please dont think that, but you shouldnt set the double standard and call out someone who disagrees with you (BigPapa), and let the one who shares your feelings slide under the radar (LeverFulcrum).

Yeah Pappa's really a huge nay-sayer; so hostile. But, he'll never be responsible for our success or failure. He'll just be BigPappaB who know's o-so-much about the team. I bow to his omniscence.

Touchy, touchy texagg09. You and mister sensitive should get together and talk about your hostility, anger issues, and hurt feelings.

Maybe he's not representing what the team's goals are, and not helping keep team unity, and I'll let you guys work that out amongst yourselves, but I think that BigPapa is doing a much poorer job of representing the team to the fans.

There were other athletes who disagreed with me, but it didn't offend me because I wasn't so much as told that the team would be happier if I just showed absolutely no interest in the program. Maybe guys like him are going to have to get used to the fact that, given all the promotion and 12th man rewards team stuff that they do for swimming, people are going to be interested in what they do and people are going to expect success from them, just like we do from all of the other A&M teams. You guys can't deny that attendance at your few home meets this year has been pretty darn good.
Maybe the program has reached the point in it's evolution where you guys are just going to have to stay off of texags to avoid this stuff like all of the other athletes do; no more flying under the radar. How many people would've noticed that the guys didn't take a trip 5 years ago?

I guess I can sum up my problem with this bigpapa thusly:
Throughout my experience in swimming, you always hear whining (and I'm sure I've been guilty of it too, along with all of you guys) about people caring more about every sport besides swimming, no matter how well the swimmers do. Now that people are paying attention, it seems like bigpapa, based on his last post, doesn't want it.

And I forget who asked, but someone was looking for a good brownie recipe.

I always use Ghiradelli's box mixed, and they are SO much better than any homemade brownies I've ever had. They're infinitely moist, and delicious.

I started this thread but never expected it to do this. It has been interesting to read though.

I hope the guys swim fast this spring no matter how they trained over the holidays.

I floated the whole time.... I'm screwed.

I dont have any connection with the team, but I am a fan and supporter who reads Texags every once in a while. I know I came into this discussion late, and really have no strong opinion on the subject, but I must say that I did not get that impression from BigPapa that you did GoBlu. That last post seemed mostly defensive and i dont feel like he does not want support or attention. I am sorry if you feel like that Blue

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I floated the whole time.... I'm screwed.

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Coach Bultman seems to think floating helps, so maybe it does. It's worked out pretty well for his girls.

get your facts straight blu. Doug Boyd thinks floating helps. He is the one who works fervently with his sprinters on floating and body position. I have never seen Steve work on that in my years here.

[This message has been edited by outside smoke (edited 1/11/2009 5:53p).]

I've seen it happen. Maybe you should spend less time watching the girls practice and more time swimming.

Why are all the guys' swimmers so gosh darn mean?!?!

It's not like the team is going to do anything special this year anyways, so why does it matter?

Playstation- care to bet on that wager? But I did hear that there was some joker suited up in an intersquad race and didn't win an event!

I'm sorry but I'm going to have to agree with wolverine on this one. While I agree with parts of his posts, other parts of B's posts seem condescending and somewhat know-it-allish which only creates divisiveness in my opinion.

Kudos to the people who are using this forum as a place for informative and constructive civil dialogue. I hope I have offended no one (outside of the deserving occasional uninformed person badmouthing the A&M athletes or staff).

Wow, my thoughts got skewed hard core...

Yes, I realize that my posts might be a tad intense, and for that, I apologize. I meant nothing out of the ordinary by it

No, I did not at all intend to alienate A&M swimming supporters. I'm sorry to anyone who got that impression.

I did not mean for the members of the Men's team to take such heat because of my post. Please do not blame them.

And finally (and possibly surprisingly enough), no, there is no sarcasm in this post.

Weeeeeeee! No hands!

If anything, I'd say that the posting by the swimmers proves one thing, and one thing only:
They're all cranky because they didn't get a training trip.

JUST KIDDING GUYS! SEE HE'S WINKING!

I do care to wager, how much are you thinking favre?

"But I did hear that there was some joker suited up in an intersquad race and didn't win an event!"

Well I heard that at the intersquad meet there was a team named "The Jensen Ried Experience" and he didn't even swim. More like the Jensen One-Armed-I'm Always on the sideline but never swim-Experience.

Dang this blew up.

From someone who knows there aint crap to do in CS over the break, the guys have taken to the public message boards to keep themselves entertained.

My opinion is they should have been building the team by surfing, open water swimming, and cliff jumping in hawaii instead. (Don't think this is allowed anymore but it worked on all fronts, "read: recruiting"
Try to make it through a practice after surfing...

But you are sure getting the perfect training in and it WILL show up in your results. Show us all what you are made of!! Gig'em

Amen Ozzie...

The coaches know what they're doing. They haven't stopped taking training trips completely. They just didn't go this year. For years, the Hawaii trip was an every other year event. One year we went to Hawaii, one year we stayed here. Hawaii was fun, but the years we stayed here were great too. We trained extra hard, had Cain hall all to ourselves, and swam fast at the end of the season. This is big boy swimming. Anyone who wants to be in the big heats of the big meets understands that. And I'd challenge anyone who thinks these young men are "floating" through their workouts to suit up for a week and go through all the work these guys are doing in and out of the water. They swam very well this weekend against LSU and look ready to swim fast at the end of the year. I'm proud of 'em.

Wow, I hope you don't get this all revved up again. Just wanted to point out that the guy who referred to floating through practice is a member of the team (although clearly he was joking). HTH.