Reply To: Tech suits
Not a college coach but I deal with the same thing in high school swimming. My number 1 frustration here is that our girls can only swim two events at the final meet and with their club team they can swim 7 events at their final meet. So they only wear a tech suit for 2 events with me and then 7 with club. They wind up thinking they got a lot better in club in 5 of their 7 events when in reality they could have gone pretty good times on everything in high school season if tech suits weren’t frowned upon so much.
At the last few meets of the year I encouraged some of my swimmers to wear tech suits to break some records and see how fast they could go in off events. I swam them JV so it wouldn’t change the outcome of the meet but still managed to upset the other coach at one meet.
I wore a tech suit in college in off events and it was frowned upon by my teammates and probably other teams.
From my experience in college and high school the reason coaches don’t want their swimmers wearing tech suits is they don’t want to give up the huge taper drop. It gives them a rush of excitement when their swimmer can drop 3 seconds in a 100 at the final meet. They also probably don’t want to risk someone not getting a season best time at the final meet. It would reveal that their taper isn’t all that they say it is. Tech suits have been hiding bad tapers for years.
I also find it funny when a coach has one 500 swimmer drop 15 seconds at sections (with a tech suit) and a similar swimmer only drops 4 seconds (without a tech suit) and they say “Swimmer A just had a great taper and Swimmer B was just okay.” In reality Swimmer B probably got slower with her taper and Swimmer A improved minimally. No one wants to credit the suits.
"Most people have the will to win. Few have the will to prepare to win."
