A Day in the Life....SUMMER!!

As the school year is just around the corner AquaBears will begin to give us glimpses of their summer days back at home.  This week's A Day in the Life comes from incoming Sophomore Christina Gregory of Papillion, NE who gives us a view of her summer day back at home.



Sophomore Christina Gregory



My alarm goes off at 5:30 A.M. every morning, and every morning I wake up in a panic wondering “huh? what’s going on?”.  Oh, time to go to swim practice, that’s right. I am currently training for my sophomore year of college swimming. But today is no ordinary day, it’s Friday, and that means there is a possibility we will play a game in practice today. 

Looking forward to this possibility I drive my butt to the outdoor pool we, Sarpy County Seawolves, practice in during the summer. It rained last night, so there’s probably unwanted foliage and debris in the pool. Great. I usually get some of this stuck in my mouth during warm up. Whatever. 

So I get to practice and look at the work out sheet. Yes. We have a nice sprint set and then we are playing Death Cross. This is my favorite game. Ever. It is played in the diving well, and we are split up into four teams. Each team goes to one of the corners in the diving well, and when our coach yells “Go!” we race to the opposite corner. Who ever is last to their corner is out. Oh yeah, you can grab people from other teams and drag them back to your corner so as to get them out. Naturally, I excel at this game. :D

After practice is over I have just enough time to grab breakfast before I have to go to work. I get to the country club where I lifeguard at and start cleaning the pool and checking the skimmers. And then I find a baby garden snake. He is freaking adorable and I name him Little Todd. I contemplated keeping him. Instead I let him free into the garden. I miss Little Todd. 

Once work is over I hurry over to the gym to meet up with my lifting partner. My sister is my favorite person to lift with. We start out by catching up and gossiping a little, and then we start our work out. We lift heavy things and it is fun.

We finish our lifting and then go home for some dinner. Yum. And then I get ready to go out to get frozen yogurt with some of the girls. Yay!

As the summer is coming to an end I am a little relieved to know that I will be back with my fellow Bears soon. Sophomore year will be an exciting one, I have definitely learned things from this past year that I’ll do differently. Like when we go on bus rides, I will now bring two full water bottles to ensure I don’t go crazy from thirst.  

MPSF All-Academic

Junior Sara Moldenhaur

Six AquaBears were named to the Mountain Pacific Sports Federation All-Academic Team!  Congrats to Hannah Hurd, Tatum Boehnke, Tori Gutt, Alisha Dauman, Hannah Halstrom, and Sara Moldenhauer for their accomplishments in the both the water and classroom!  WAY TO GO BEARS!

Junior Tatum Boehnke

NC Alum Tori Gutt



NC Alum Alisha Dauman



Junior Hannah Hurd

Alisha and Tori both recently graduated from Northern Colorado while Halstrom will be a Senior, and Hurd, Sara and Tatum will be Juniors during the 2011-2012 season.

To be named to the All-Academic Team athletes must be at least a Sophomore academically, competed in 50% of the team's competitions, have a Cumulative GPA of 3.0 or higher, and completed a full year at their current university.

Senior Hannah Halstrom

Gutt earns Academic Award

Congrats to NC Aquabear Alum Tori Gutt for earning her 3rd Capital One/CoSIDA Academic All-District award!  Tori completed her Bachelor degree in December with a GPA of a 4.0 and worked on her Masters during the Spring Semester while wrapping up a great career with the AquaBears.  In the final meet of her career Tori made her NCAA "B" cut in the 200 Breast, set three individual records and a new 400 Medley Relay record.

Follow this link to read the Offical Press Release on UNCBears.com

AquaBear Alum Tori Gutt

NC Swim Camp 2011

It's time to sign for up the 2011 Northern Colorado Swim Camp!  There are two camp sessions; each lasting Monday through Thursday with an option of staying for the Start and Turn Camp.  This is a great opportunity for swimmers to work on their technique and learn more about swimming!





NC Swimming Alum & NCAA "B" Qualifer Tori Gutt

The first camp session starts Monday June 5; Session 2 starts Monday June 13.

To learn more about the NC Swim Camp click here.  GO BEARS!

NC Swim & Dive Booster Club

Kira Alger

You can now support the AquaBears out of the water by becoming a member of the Northern Colorado Swimming and Diving Booster Club!  As a member of the booster club you will receive regular email updates throughout the year, an invite to our end of the season team banquet and a NC t-shirt. 

Tatum Boehnke

To sign-up and learn more about the Swim and Dive Booster Club click here

A Day in the Life.....Spring Training

While a swimmers' spring training is not quite like that of baseball, it is still an exciting time for the team.  The AquaBears get to focus on things that will help them next season including agility drills and technique work in the pool.

Freshman Kaitlin Sorensen gives us a glimpse of what spring is like for the AquaBears.

Freshman Kaitlin Soresen

Tuesday, April 12th 2011, my eyes are abruptly awaken to my alarm at 6:05 a.m.  To most college students 6:05 is quite an early rise. Possibly only birds and squirrels rise that early. Oh yeah and swimmers.

After my rise at 6:05, I walked with my roommates to practice. This month in April, it is spring training, so our swim practices are only an hour, but for an hour we are able to work on technique in strokes and turns. So basically all the fundamentals of the strokes. So for practice the coaches have been working on all the turns the past 2 weeks. I was able to work on my breaststroke turn. Quite helpful if I do say so myself.

After practice ended at 7:30, I walked over to the dining hall to eat breakfast with the team and can I just say I was quite excited for breakfast this morning because 1) its breakfast and 2) they had bear claws which are basically the best breakfast pastries ever. So naturally I was quite excited for breakfast.

After breakfast I started getting ready for school. I am a Journalism major but right now I'm mostly taking liberal arts classes. So today I had my Sociology of Genders, and Women's Studies classes. My sociology class is one of my favorite classes this semester. My teacher Professor Mark Riddle is so lively and allows the class to be very interactive which makes the class fun. A class to take FOR sure.

After my Sociology class and my Women's Studies, I headed off to lunch and was able to get Gourmet to Go. After lunch I took a much needed nap to catch up on some missed sleep. At 2:50, I walked on over to Butler Hancock for dryland. At dryland on tuesdays, we do sprints and sprint shuffles. Middle Distance runners run 12 minutes and then sprinters lift for an hour.

After dryland, here comes dinner! Next to breakfast, best meal of the day. At dinner today, chicken fried chicken was on the menu and it was yum yum yummy. I paired the chicken with lemonade and a piece of bread. So all in all dinner was delicious.

After dinner I went back to my dorm to work on my homework for the evening. I was able fit in some extra time to watch The Dance Scene, a new show on E!  And then like any other day I called it a night. This is what being a Bear is all about. Best life ever!

Go Bears!

AquaBears Banquet

The AquaBears celebrated their season this past weekend with a banquet attended by over 80 people including representatives from Academic Success, Jimmy Henderson and Michael Kallsen, and our Faculty Representative, Dr. Michael Mills.

Senior Tori Gutt (Scholar Athlete; Swimmer of the Year), Senior Kelly Schmeckpeper-Cook (Diver of the Year), Sophomore Allison Scott (Most Inspirational) and Freshman Renee Stephens (Most Improved) were honored with the four awards which the team votes on.

Also honored were this year's captains who passed the torch to next year's captain Tatum Boehnke, who will be joined by a Team Council selected by Tatum and the Coaching Staff.

The following is a list of the 2010-2011 AquaBears accomplishments:

·        Achieved team Cumulative GPA of 3.08

·        Finished at .500 for dual meet wins

·        Finished 6^th at the MPSF Championships, beating Cal State Bakersfield, who beat us by 70 points last year. 

·        We were 98% for season best performances at MPSF

·        8 new school records, Tori Gutt in the 100, 200 Breast and 400 IM, and Kelly Schmeckpeper-Cook on 1M and 3M, 200 Medley Relay (Sammy Leonard, Amanda Donegan, Gina Riggle, and JJ Smith), 400 Medley Relay (Sammy Leonard, Tori Gutt, Courtney Van Oost, and Gina Riggle), and 200 Free relay (Gina Riggle, Jamie Byrne, Kira Alger, and JJ Smith)

·        33 New All Time Top 10 Athletes

·        49 New All Time Top 10 Performances

·        1 NCAA B Cut (Tori in the 200 Breaststroke) and 2 NCAA Zone E Qualifiers (Kelly and Sara Moldenhauer).

·        Tori will be our first Honorable Mention Scholar All American, which requires a NCAA B cut and a minimum 3.5 GPA.

·        Inducted our first ever hall of fame diver, Sabra Moss who dove here 1993-96.

·        And in recruiting we have committed 16 new athletes, and still waiting 3 decisions.  

Seniors Kelly, Alisha, Alana & Tori

Thank you to all who have supported the AquaBears this season, from near and afar.  We wish this year's graduating class of Tori Gutt, Alana Dauman, Alisha Dauman and Kelly Schmeckpeper-Cook only the best in their future endeavors and look forward to seeing them at Alumni events in the future. 

The AquaBears are looking towards next year............